Energy Utilization Efficiency of China Considering Carbon Emissions—Based on Provincial Panel Data

Abstract

With the development of the economy, environmental pollution caused by energy consumption has become increasingly prominent. Improving the efficiency of energy utilization is an important way to solve this problem. Firstly, we used a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to calculate the energy utilization efficiency of China’s provinces and regions from the perspective of environmental constraints, including four inputs—labor force, capital stock, energy consumption and carbon emission—and one output, GDP. Secondly, an entity fixed effect model of panel data was built to investigate the influence of openness, urbanization, marketization and industrial structure on energy utilization efficiency in the process of economic structure change. The results indicate that China’s energy efficiency shows a trend of first stabilizing and then declining from 2007 to 2017. Meanwhile, the comprehensive energy efficiency of all provinces and regions is not very ideal. Only Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong constitute the forefront of China’s energy efficiency. The lack of pure technical efficiency in most provinces is the main reason for the low comprehensive efficiency, but there are also obvious differences among provinces and regions. In addition, urbanization, openness and industrial structure have a negative impact on energy efficiency, while marketization has a significant positive impact on energy efficiency. Finally, based on the regional differences, some suggestions were put forward to improve China’s energy utilization efficiency.