| Iron and steel industry is the foundational and strategic industry of the national economy. Promoted by sustained and rapid development of its economy, China's iron and steel industry has achieved rapid development in technology, enterprise competitiveness as well as other aspects, while the crude steel output has been ranking first for ten successive years in the world. However, China is not yet a great power in iron and steel production because there are a lot of problems , such as unreasonable product structure, low resource utilization, environmental pollution, weak technological innovation capability and international competitiveness and so on. The extensive mode of economic growth, characterized by high-input, high-consumption, high-emission and high-pollution, has not yet been fundamentally transformed. Vigorously developing the circular economy and realizing the ecological transformation has become a very important and urgent strategy adopted by iron and steel industry.The main direction of China's iron and steel industry development is to build resource-conserving and environment-friendly enterprises by achieving ecological transformation. In order to promote the development of circular economy in iron and steel industry and assess its ecological construction and renovation process, scientific evaluation methods are required for comprehensive evaluation, which is the scientific basis for government and enterprises' decision.Eco-efficiency refers to the goods and services with competitive price, which could be provided to meet human being's need and improve their life quality, meanwhile, the ecological impacts and resource intensity of its entire life cycle gradually reduce to the level which, at least, suited to the Earth's carrying capacity. Its core idea emphasizes that we should manufacture higher quality products with less resource input and lower pollution emissions. In order to achieve the sustainable development of industries ultimately, it is demand that industry enterprises should manufacture the maximum products with the minimal resources and energy in the production process, exerting the smallest influence on the environment and achieving a win-win situation between economic and environmental benefits. Eco-efficiency provides the industry with an important means and tool, which can fit the sector itself into a sustainable development agenda. Based on the background of circular economy development and ecological transition in the iron and steel industry, this dissertation, taking the eco-efficiency as the main line, explores the connotation of eco-efficiency in steel sector and puts forward the quantitative model for eco-efficiency measurement. Meanwhile, based on the circular economy, the evaluation index system and comprehensive evaluation model for eco-efficiency measurement in iron and steel industry is also set up, which are used for scientific evaluation about the eco-efficiency in this sector. The contents of this dissertation will be tentatively composed of three parts namely, the theoretical research, the quantitative research and the countermeasure research. It can be further divided into seven chapters, in which, chapter two, chapter three and Chapter four constitute the theoretical study and chapter five is the quantitative study while Chapter six. deals with countermeasures research. Detailed contents come as follow:Chapter one offers an introduction to the source, background and significance of this dissertation. By means of systematic summarization and comprehensive assessment of related literature, it points out the limitations of current research theory and methodology. Theories related to Eco-efficiency, both home and abroad, mostly involved the enterprises, while researches were conducted within the enterprise and process level and focused on the concept awareness and general analysis of eco-efficiency. Because of the insufficiency of the previous studies, this paper then expounds research objectives, research ideas and methodology as well as the main contents of the research.Chapter two serves as the theoretical basis for this study. It classifies and analyses the basic theory of eco-efficiency evaluation in the iron and steel industry, including the circular economy theory and industrial ecology theory, both of which provide the practical theoretical framework for the sustainable development of industries, and solve the problems for sustainable development in terms of the methodology. Both the circular economy theory and the industrial ecology theory bring the natural capital, the composition of products and services brought by investment of resources and environment into the traditional production function. Therefore, the eco-efficiency problems have emerged since the elements of the resources and the environment was introduced into the production function. Eco-efficiency serves as an important bridge, for a win-win goal between achieving economic growth and developing circular economy, as well as the appropriate measurement of the circular economy.Chapter three analyzes the current development of China's iron and steel industry. It points out the current main problems of the iron and iron and steel industry in China from three aspects, namely, the industry structure, product structure, resource and environment. On the basis of understanding of the world steel sector's development trend, it also indicates that the circular economy is the only way for China's iron and steel industry. The description of the status quo of China's steel sector and the understanding of the development trend of world steel industry in this chapter will not only help to find the deep-rooted reason for developing circular economy and carrying out ecological efficiency evaluation in China's iron and steel industry, but also provide realistic basis for the eco-efficiency evaluation theory system in the iron and steel industry in the latter part of this paper. Chapter four is the main body of the theoretical research in this dissertation, which defines the core concept of this research and answers the question "What is the connotation of eco-efficiency in iron and steel industry ". First, it conducts an in-depth analysis on the essence and characteristics of eco-efficiency and it also illustrates that, in this research, the essence of eco-efficiency lies in the simultaneously realization of the substances (resources, energy) and pollution reduction as well as the economic growth, which based on the relation between recycling economy and three other factors, i.e. the circular economy, the economic growth and the environmental load; Second, in the light of industrial ecology theory, it analyses the essence of ecological steel industry and sums up the objectives, characteristics, implementation path and the basic model of ecological steel industry. Hence, it reaches a conclusion that improving eco-efficiency is the core content in eco-industries, which is the main way for improving eco-efficiency; Finally, it defines the essence of eco-efficiency of the iron and steel industry on the basis of combination and internal relationship of the eco-efficiency and industrial ecology.Chapter five, a quantitative study, is one of the cores of the whole paper. It comprehensively exposits the basic DEA theory and models for efficiency evaluation, methods of pollutants treatment, production probability muster, the evaluating indicator selections and the data sources and so on. On the basis of the current quantitative study theory and methodology, this research, from the angle of undesirable outputs, brings the pollutant emissions, acting as the undesirable input, into the data envelopment analysis model (DEA) and then conducts a systematic, scientific, dynamic evaluation about China's eco-efficiency (including scale efficiency, pure technical efficiency and overall efficiency) in the iron and steel sector. The research results show that:â‘ the whole eco-efficiency in the steel industry is not high, but witnesses a fluctuating upward trend;â‘¡Although the scale of the sector influences the steel industry to some extent, the pure technical efficiency is one of the dominant factors impacting eco-efficiency in this industry;â‘¢The analysis of efficiency improvement in the iron and steel industry illustrates that there are still serious phenomena, such as over inputs and inadequacy output, which means there is still large potential for energy-saving and emission-reducing in China's iron and steel industry.Chapter six provides countermeasures. In the light of the research result of the previous chapter, it puts forward a number of countermeasures, namely, the innovative measures of industrial organization, the measures of circular economy technical innovation and the measures of institutional innovation, to improve eco-efficiency in China's iron and steel sector. It also tries to provide the policy support for the development of circular economy and ecological transition in the iron and steel sector.The main innovation in this dissertation:1,Extends the research of eco-efficiency theory to the meso-level (the iron and steel industry), and proposes that the two-dimensional characteristics, both economical and environmental, of steel sector's eco-economic system described by eco-efficiency could be used as an appropriate measurement to assess the level of circular economy development and ecological advancement in iron and steel industry, which expands the theory system and application scope of eco-efficiency. After systematically study of eco-efficiency theory system, this dissertation points out that the essence (connotation) of the eco-efficiency is the simultaneously realization of the substances (resources, energy) and pollution reduction as well as the economic growth; and Studies the effect of eco-efficiency, which acts as a bridge, for a win-win goal between achieving economic growth and developing a circular economy and, then, extends the research of eco-efficiency theory to the meso-level (industry). Adopting the two-dimensional characteristics, both economical and environmental, of eco-efficiency, this research conducts a comprehensive evaluation for developing circular economy in this sector and expands the applications scope of eco-efficiency theory systems as well as enriches the essence of eco-efficiency in steel sector, which provides a theoretical foundation for the eco-efficiency measurement and eco - evaluation methodology in the steel industry.2,Based on the current theories and methods, this research, from the angle of undesirable output, brings the pollutant emissions, acting as the undesirable input, into the envelopment analysis model and then applies the model, on the basis of circular economy, into eco-efficiency assessment in China's iron and steel industry, which has a certain practical significance for studying circular economy development in this industry.Developing circular economy in iron and steel industry has been one of the concerns in Chinese government, enterprises as well as academic circle. A great number of results demonstrate that the steel sector is a significant focus for developing circular economy in China. Applying data envelopment analysis methods, this research conducts an assessment about development level of circular economy in China's steel sector and points out its potential of energy-saving and emission-reducing, which undoubtedly bears great practical significance for the steel industry in many aspects, such as developing circular economy, reducing energy consumption and emissions, identifying gaps, looking for improvement strategies and measurements.3,On the basis of eco-efficiency evaluation results, it puts forward three main countermeasures for promoting circular economy level and improving eco-efficiency, namely, the innovative measures of industrial organization, the measures of circular economy technical innovation and the measures of institutional innovation, which provide the policy support for the development of circular economy and ecological transition in the steel sector.
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