Research On China's Inter-provincial Energy And Environmental Efficiency Based On Dynamic Two-stage SBM

Energy shortage and environmental pressure have become the main constraints on China’s sustainable development.In order to alleviate the current situation of energy shortage,the 13 th Five-Year Plan for the first time put forward a "double-control" action of total energy consumption and intensity of energy consumption;and in order to alleviate environmental pressure,a series of laws and regulations,such as " Action Plan for Water Pollution Prevention and Control" and " Ten Measures for Prevention and Control of Air Pollution",are put forward successively.Efficiency measurement can not only show the past achievements of the evaluation object,but also provide goals for its future development.Undoubtedly,various laws and regulations will have a greater impact on the energy utilization and pollutant control of provinces and municipalities in the future.It is more realistic to study the energy utilization and pollutant control efficiency of provinces and municipalities from a dynamic perspective.Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA)has been widely used in energy and environmental efficiency assessment because it can deal with multiple inputs and outputs at the same time without subjectively setting production functions.According to the actual situation,this paper divides the development process of provinces and cities into two sub-stages: production and pollution treatment,and then divides the pollutants produced by energy consumption into two types: environmental pollutants(pollutants that can be treated in the sub-stage of pollution control)and greenhouse gases(mainly carbon dioxide).A new two-stage SBM model is constructed.In order to have a clear understanding of the development trend of provinces and cities in the research period,a dynamic two-stage SBM model was constructed from a dynamic perspective.The production capacity,pollution treatment level and comprehensive efficiency of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2007 to 2015 were analyzed.Finally,through the construction of two indicators,the total factor energy efficiency and the total factor environmental pollution disposal efficiency of each province and city are evaluated,and the main conclusions are as follows:1.Firstly,the validity of the proposed model is verified,and it is found that the overall level of production and pollution treatment in China will be underestimated without considering the connection variables in different periods(i.e.,static two-stage SBM model);and then the reasons why the connection variables affect the efficiency of the two sub-stages are explored in depth.2.Overall,the average efficiency of China’s production and pollution treatment reaches 0.9088 during the study period,which is at a high level.There are seven provinces and municipalities that have always been at the frontier of efficiency,namely,Beijing,Jiangsu,Hebei,Zhejiang,Hainan,Inner Mongolia and Guizhou.This shows that these provinces and municipalities have basically achieved harmonious development between production and pollution treatment sub-stages,and can be used as benchmark for other provinces and municipalities.From the perspective of time dimension,the overall efficiency of the whole country,the central and western regions show a downward trend,while that of the eastern region shows an upward trend.The paper further explains the reasons for this phenomenon.3.From the sub-stage level,the average efficiency of China’s production sub-stage is at a high level during the research period,but the differences between provinces and cities are slowly expanding.The level of pollution treatment is always lower than that of production,which indicates that improving the ability of pollution treatment of provinces and cities is the key for the improvement of the overall level of production and pollution control in China,and the development difference of pollution treatment sub-stages of provinces and cities in the research period is always greater than that of production sub-stages,which indicates that the capacity of pollution treatment of provinces and cities in China is uneven and the development situation is not optimistic.4.In terms of total factor energy efficiency and environmental pollutant disposal efficiency,China’s total factor energy efficiency is 0.9749 during the study period,showing the highest in the eastern region,the second in the western region and the lowest in the central region.Total factor pollutant disposal efficiency is slightly lower than energy efficiency,which is 0.9109,and regional development shows a trend of gradual decline in east,West and central.5.Taking 2015 as an example,this paper studies the improvement of each index in order to achieve an effective state,and further explores the total factor efficiency of two kinds of energy and three kinds of environmental pollutants in that year.It can provide a clearer understanding of the weak links in the development of each province and city,and help each province and city to formulate corresponding policies and measures.