Energy and carbon performance improvement in China's mining Industry: Evidence from the 11th and 12th five-year plan

The mining industry is one of the basic industries in China that ensures energy security. However, the mining industry's energy consumption is huge. It is, therefore, significant to improve the mining industry's energy and carbon performance. This paper adopts the non-radial directional distance function (NDDF) to measure the energy and carbon performance (ECP) of China's mining industry. It uses the metafrontier Malmquist index (MML) to disassemble the mining industry's ECP into three components to explore the driving factors during the 11th and 12th five-year plan. The empirical results reflect that although the mining industry's ECP is improved during two plan periods, technological progress does not have an obvious contribution to the ECP improvement. This means the mining sector lacks the innovation effect. As for policymaking, the government should support the mining sector's technological innovation, reduce surplus capacity, and open mineral markets.