Study on total-factor carbon emission efficiency of China's manufacturing industry when considering technology heterogeneity

摘要

Improving carbon emission efficiency in China is conducive to achieving the win-win situation of economic growth, energy conservation and emissions reduction but it is also crucial to be able to accurately measure it. Based on an improved non-radial directional distance function, the paper constructs a new meta-frontier total-factor carbon emission efficiency index by considering technology heterogeneity. In order to reveal the source of efficiency losses, we look at the two dimensions of production technology and management so as to be able to then decompose the meta-frontier carbon emission inefficiency into technology gap inefficiency and managerial inefficiency. Following this, we measure the meta-frontier total-factor carbon emission efficiency of China's 31 manufacturing industries from 2012 to 2016 and analyze the root causes of their carbon emission inefficiency. The results show that, during the investigation period, the meta-frontier total-factor carbon emission efficiency of China's manufacturing industry was low and there was significant industrial heterogeneity. The meta-frontier total-factor carbon emission efficiency of high-tech industry was the highest, followed by that of middle-tech industry, with the lowest being low-tech industry. The root cause of carbon emission inefficiency in China's manufacturing industry mainly lies in the low level of management. With improvements in industrial technological levels, managerial inefficiency gradually increases as a percentage of the total even though technology gap inefficiency gradually decreases. Based on the above results, we suggest measures to improve carbon emission efficiency for those various manufacturing industries characterized by different technology levels. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.