Energy and AQI performance of 31 cities in China

The rapid increase and high concentration of urban population have resulted in deteriorating atmospheric pollution, especially the primary pollutant of Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM2.5), significantly affecting peoples normal life and production activities. Because relatively few studies have focused on the Air Quality Index (AQI) and energy efficiency, this research employs the modified dynamic SBM model to analyze the energy efficiency and AQI efficiency of 31 cities in China from 2013 to 2016. We take energy consumed, employees, and government expenditure as input variables and GDP (desirable) and AQI (undesirable) as output variables and use assets as a carry-over variable indicator to assess inter-temporal efficiency from one period to the next period. The results show that for the performance of overall efficiency indicators, there are still 22 cities that need to significantly improve their overall efficiency. The modified dynamic SBM model presents that the efficiency changes among the cities are not significant, indicating that the effects from government regulatory policies and governance measures during the dynamic development of 2013-2016 are not significant, and that there is a lagging effect of government policies. It is therefore more necessary for the government and academia to devote greater efforts to research and industrial cooperation.