The Study On Carbon Efficiency And Carbon Abatement Costs Of China’s Coal-Fired Power Plants

At present,China is the largest energy consumer and the largest carbon-dioxide emission country in the world.In order to meet the emission abatement targets in the Paris Agreement,China will face great pressure of carbon emission abatement in the long future.As one of the main sources of carbon-dioxide emission in China,the power industry was first included in the carbon emission trading system at the end of 2017,which means that the power industry in China will face more stringent carbon emission constraint.Therefore,studying the carbon-dioxide emission efficiency and carbon-dioxide abatement cost of China’s power industry can provide theoretical basis for the low-carbon development and related policies of China’s power industry.Based on the endogenous directional distance function,employing data envelopment analysis and using the input-output data at the enterprise level,this study empirically estimates the carbon efficiency and carbon abatement costs of China’s thermal power industry in 2011 and 2012.We decompose the change of carbon abatement cost based on the directional distance function for the first time.Thus we obtain the the two factors inflencing the carbon abatement costs — technological change and input change.Meanwhile all results are compared with the results obtained with the traditional exogenous vector.The results show that there are significant differences between the carbon efficiency of thermal power industry obtained with exogenous vector and the result obtained with endogenous vector.Whether the vector is endogenous or not also has a significant impact on the carbon abatement costs.The change of carbon abatement costs of thermal power industry and the results of its decomposition in the endogenous directional distance function are opposite to the results obtained from the exogenous directional distance function.In the exogenous directional distance function,as for the carbon efficiency and carbon abatement costs in 2011 and 2012,the differences between state-owned thermal power plants and non-state-owned thermal power plants are significant.Compared with non-state-owned thermal power plants,state-owned thermal power plants have higher carbon efficiency and lower carbon abatement costs.On average,from 2011 to 2012,the carbon abatement costs of China’s thermal power industry have decreased;for the representative state-owned thermal power plant,technological change is the main reason for the carbon abatement costs.The endogenous vector gives the opposite result.In 2011 and 2012,overall,the carbon efficiency of state-owned thermal power plants is slightly lower than that of non-state-owned thermal power plants.Yet,on average,the carbon abatement costs of China’s thermal power industry increased from 2011 to 2012.Technological change is the main reason for the increase in the carbon abatement costs,and the carbon abatement costs of state-owned thermal power plants increased more than that of non-state-owned thermal power plants.For non-state-owned thermal power plants,the main reason for the reduction of carbon abatement costs is the input change.