Study On The Environmental Performance Of China’s Thermal Power Enterprises And Its Relationship With Economic Performance

Nowadays,with the growing environmental problems,environmental protection has become a hot topic in China.As characterized by high energy consumption and high pollution,thermal power enterprises are remediation targets in environmental protection area.Especially since the 11 th Five-Year Plan,our country has introduced a series of policies to control the discharge of pollutants,and specially introduced the "standards for thermal power plants about air pollutant discharge" to limit thermal power plants’ pollutant emissions.Furthermore,China has also introduced the mechanism of subsidy price in order to stimulate the power plants to increase environmental protection investment.From the aspect of industrial structure adjustment,China implemented the "encourage large projects and discourage small energy-inefficient power plants" policy,out of high energy consumption of small thermal power units.All of the actives above and many more have achieved some success.However,as we all know,Haze,water pollution still plagued today’s China.Although our country has taken some measures to control the energy consumption and pollution emissions of the thermal power enterprises,it’s still a question that whether these high emission and polluting enterprises have a potential for improvement.So in this paper,data envelopment analysis method(DEA method)is adopted to measure the performance of energy-saving and emission reduction(environmental performance)in China’s listed thermal power enterprises.As a result,there are only 4 companies in the analysis of the year achieve the DEA optimal,the remaining 16 thermal power companies still have a potential to improve environmental performance.Furthermore,this paper analyzes the differences in the environmental performance of different thermal power enterprises from the perspective of regional and enterprise scale.The results show that the thermal power enterprises in the eastern region show better environmental performance,followed by the central region and the western region,and the size of the thermal power enterprises does not significantly affect its environmental performance.Based on the theory of stakeholder,this paper analyzes that the improvement of environmental performance needs not only the policy incentives of the government departments and the supervision of the public,but also the enterprises themselves as a indispensable role.However,many companies believe that the improvement of environmental performance is contrary to the main goal of their business management-to maximize corporate wealth,this kind of corporate wealth can be expressed as the economic performance of enterprises to some extent.Therefore,based on the environmental performance with data envelopment analysis method,this paper explores the relationship between environmental performance and economic performance in thermal power industry by using multiple regression analysis.The results show that there is a positive correlation between environmental performance and environmental performance,that is,thermal power enterprises with higher environmental performance show better economic performance.This is also a reference for the thermal power enterprises to play a subjective initiative in the process of improving environmental performance and actively control the emissions and energy consumption from the source.Finally,based on the above research,this paper puts forward suggestions for environmental protection departments and other government departments and thermal power enterprises to improve the environmental performance,hoping to realize the sustainable development of China’s thermal power industry and effectively protect the ecosystem.