Study On Carbon Emission Efficiency Of China’s Thermal Power Industry

Global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions may have far-reaching impacts on current and future generations.As the world’s largest carbon emitter,China will face enormous pressure to reduce carbon emissions in the coming period.Considering the huge contribution of the thermal power industry to energy-related CO₂ emissions,it is necessary to study the carbon emissions and carbon emission efficiency of the thermal power industry.Carbon emission efficiency can be understood as the degree of maximizing ideal output and minimizing CO₂ emissions under a certain input level.Accurately measuring the carbon emission efficiency of the thermal power industry is the key to the low-carbon transformation of China’s power industry,and the basis for achieving the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.Based on the relevant data of thermal power industry in China from 2005 to 2019,this paper firstly accounts for the carbon emissions of thermal power industry using the IPCC carbon emission factor method.Secondly,a three-stage Undesirable SBM-DEA model was constructed to statically evaluate the carbon emission efficiency of thermal power industry with thermal power installed capacity,labor,and energy consumption as input variables,thermal power generation as desired output,and CO₂ emission as non-desired output.At the same time,the external environmental factors that affecting the carbon emission efficiency of the thermal power industry are analyzed.Finally,the dynamics of carbon emission efficiency in the thermal power industry is analyzed by combining the Malmquist-Luenberger index（ML index）model and its decomposition.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:（1）China’s thermal power industry shows an overall upward trend in carbon emissions,with an average annual growth rate of4.92%during the study period.The eastern coastal provinces with developed economy and large population,and Inner Mongolia,which is rich in coal resources,ranked high.（2）The average carbon emission efficiency of China’s thermal power industry in the first and third stages are 0.744 and 0.670,respectively,which are still a certain gap from the production frontier（efficiency of 1）.East China and North China are in the first echelon,Central China and South China are in the second echelon,while Northwest,Northeast,and Southwest are less efficient.Provincially,Jiangsu and Zhejiang both rank high in the first and third stage efficiency.Through the comparative analysis of the first and third stages,on the same cross section,after excluding the external environment variables and random errors,from the perspective of internal management efficiency,the carbon emission efficiency of China’s thermal power industry has decreased in the third stage,indicating that the external environment has a facilitating effect on carbon emission efficiency,and the management level of the thermal power industry is poor.（3）SFA regression analysis shows that the proportion of secondary industry and energy intensity will hurt carbon emission efficiency,while the level of import and export,government regulation,and scientific and technological support will contribute to the improvement of carbon emission efficiency.（4）The ML index model shows that the carbon emission efficiency of China’s thermal power industry has steadily increased during the study period,and technological progress is the main driver.East China has the largest ML index.The carbon emission efficiency of thermal power industry has increased in all provinces,with the fastest growth rate in Jiangsu,and all provinces except Shaanxi are more dependent on technological progress.