China's CO2 emissions of a critical sector: Evidence from energy intensive industries

CO2 emissions from China's energy intensive industries increased sharply during 2000-2013 and reached around 43.84 billion tons in 2013. The large amounts of emissions make it necessary to study the CO2 emissions performance and efficiency in these industries. In this paper, we use the Shephard input distance function and nonparametric metafrontier approach to construct an index called Metafrontier Malmquist CO2 Emissions Performance Index (MMCPI) to evaluate the efficiency of CO2 emissions from China's energy intensive industries. Then we decompose the index into three components: technical efficiency change (TEC), technical change (TC) and catching-up effect. Finally, we calculate the reduction potential of CO2 emissions under both the meta-frontier and group-frontier. The results show that, the CO2 emissions efficiency in China's energy intensive industries improved in the period of 2000-2013. In addition, under the group-frontier, there is almost no CO2 emissions reduction potential for energy intensive industries in Jiangsu and Shanghai in Eastern China, while CO2 emissions reduction potential in Hebei Province is the largest. In Central China, CO2 emissions reduction potential in Shanxi is the largest and Henan has the lowest. In Western China, the potential of CO2 emissions reduction in Sichuan is the lowest, while Ningxia has the largest reduction potential. (C)2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.