Does there exist congestion for energy input:Empirical evidence from Chinese industrial sector

摘要

Improving energy efficiency has been widely regarded as one of the most cost-effective ways to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction.Many earlier studies have employed data envelopment analysis(DEA)approach to measuring total-factor energy efficiency.Despite the development of different DEA models for measuring energy efficiency,the structural inefficiency in energy use,which is referred to as energy congestion in this paper,has rarely been examined.When energy congestion exists,increasing energy input would decrease outputs and therefore lead to a decline in energy efficiency.Eliminating the effect of energy congestion can provide another opportunity for improvement by reorganizing energy input and other inputs at the best proportions.This paper contributes to empirically investigate whether energy congestion exist in Chinese industrial sector.Two approaches respectively based on constant returns to scale(CRS)and variable returns to scale(VRS)are employed in our empirical analysis.It is found that the industrial sectors of most provinces in China suffered from energy congestion to different magnitudes.Our empirical results also show that the magnitude of energy congestion derived from CRS-based model is greater than that from VRS-based model for most provinces.