A comprehensive analysis of China’s regional energy and environment efficiency from supply chain perspective

ABSTRACT

With the rapid development of China’s economy, the problems of China’s energy shortage and environmental pollution have become increasingly prominent. However, few studies have evaluated energy and environment efficiency from the perspective of energy production and energy utilisation. From supply chain perspective, this paper uses a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to measure the efficiency of China’s regional energy and environment by considering both energy production and utilisation systems. Specifically, the production in each region is regarded as a two-stage network structure. The first stage is the energy production system, and the second stage is the energy utilisation system. Then, an efficiency decomposition programme is proposed to obtain the highest subsystem efficiency. Our empirical study on 30 main province-level regions of Chinese mainland shows that most of these regions are inefficient in both stages of energy production and utilisation. The energy production system has a negative impact on overall efficiency. In addition, China’s three major areas have unbalanced development. The eastern has the highest efficiency, followed by the central, and then the western part. Our empirical results provide effective measures in improving energy and environment efficiency.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy and environment efficiency
• energy production and utilisation
• two-stage network structure
• data envelopment analysis

Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 71904084, 71901178, 71971203, 71571173, 71921001 and 71834003), Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (grant number: 2020TQ0145), the Natural Science Foundation for Jiangsu Province (grant number: BK20190427), the Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (grant number: 19GLC017), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant number: JBK190504 and WK2040160028), and the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Foundation for Doctorate Holders of Jiangsu Province, and the Four Batch Talent Programs of China.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 71904084, 71901178, 71971203, 71571173, 71921001 and 71834003), Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (grant number: 2020TQ0145), the Natural Science Foundation for Jiangsu Province (grant number: BK20190427), the Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (grant number: 19GLC017), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant number: JBK190504 and WK2040160028), and the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Foundation for Doctorate Holders of Jiangsu Province, and the Four Batch Talent Programs of China.