Se Energy Efficiency, CO₂Emission Performance And Technology Gaps Among The Eastern, Central And Western Region

Energy and environmental problem has loomed so large recently with the dazzling tempo of economic growth, the most obvious of which lies in January,2013when30provinces has been swamped by the haze four times in a row. It indicates the dead end for the previous path of treatment after pollution. Attention should be paid on both the speed and quality of economic growth.In response to the appeal raised in the17th CPC National Congress of stimulating the economy to develop fast and healthily, steps has to be taken to make real both efficient energy use and CO2emission reduction commission. It’s the challenge we has to face up to currently and in the foreseeable future.Attempts has been made to explore the above-mentioned problem under a total factor framework by introducing undesirable output—CO2and non-energy input—capital and labor. The paper has evaluated the energy efficiency, CO2emission performance of the29provinces in2011and investigate the reason for the inefficiency of different regions based on a meta-frontier non-radial directional distance function analysis. Meanwhile, meta-technology ratio index as well as PRGC and PRGE index has been adopted to measure the relative gap between the group-frontier and the meta-frontier as well as the potential reduction gap in energy use and CO2emissions respectively.The empirical study indicates that a relatively significant green production technology gap exists between the three regions and the rank of efficiency index has shown a very different pattern under the group-frontier and meta-frontier because of this technological heterogeneity. The eastern region has a relatively advanced technology all over the country, but still has some room to enhance the performance of the efficiency under the current production technology by means of overcoming the managerial inefficiency (GMI). The central region displays the best efficiency performance under the group-frontier but the penultimate efficiency performance under the meta-frontier technology, indicating that there is plenty room for the central region to decrease the technology gap inefficiency by means of technological innovation as well as introduction and assimilation of the advanced technology at home and abroad. Measures have to be taken from the perspective of both the management and technology to eliminate the inefficiency in the west region. However, in the long run, it’s practical to improve the efficiency of all the evaluated provinces by increasing the ratio of the clean and renewable energy in the primary energy consumption.