The energy-environment efficiency of road and railway sectors in China: Evidence from the provincial level

Abstract The transportation sector, particularly the road and the railway sectors, is an important source of CO2 emissions in China. This study combines the non-radial data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with window analysis to measure the energy-environment efficiency of the road and railway sectors of 30 provinces in China, then uses the Tobit regression model to analyze the factors affecting the energy-environment efficiency. The findings suggest that, first of all, although these two sectors are both with high energy-environment efficiency, there is a higher probability for railway sector to improve its energy-environment efficiency than that of road sector, with the average energy-environment efficiency 0.9307 and 0.9815, respectively. Second, the road sector in eastern China with the highest average energy-environment efficiency, lower in the western region, and lowest in the central region. As for the railway sector, the western region has the highest average energy-environment efficiency, followed by the central and the eastern regions. Third, the relationship between energy-environment efficiency and income level in the road and railway sectors follow the U-shaped and inverted U-shaped curves, respectively.

[1]  Yang Zhang,et al.  Transport energy consumption and saving in China , 2014 .

[2]  George Halkos,et al.  Exploring the existence of Kuznets curve in countries' environmental efficiency using DEA window analysis , 2009 .

[3]  B. Saboori,et al.  Investigating the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in Vietnam , 2015 .

[4]  Yue-Jun Zhang,et al.  The impact of economic growth, industrial structure and urbanization on carbon emission intensity in China , 2014, Natural Hazards.

[5]  Álvaro Costa,et al.  Airlines performance in the new market context: A comparative productivity and efficiency analysis. , 2008 .

[6]  Yi-Ming Wei,et al.  China’s regional industrial energy efficiency and carbon emissions abatement costs , 2014 .

[7]  Efthymios G. Tsionas,et al.  A Bayesian approach to statistical inference in stochastic DEA , 2010 .

[8]  Jie Zhang,et al.  Comparisons of system benefits and thermo-economics for exhaust energy recovery applied on a heavy-duty diesel engine and a light-duty vehicle gasoline engine , 2014 .

[9]  P. Eng.  CO2 emissions from fuel combustion: highlights , 2009 .

[10]  Abraham Charnes,et al.  Preface to topics in data envelopment analysis , 1984, Ann. Oper. Res..

[11]  Yue-Jun Zhang,et al.  Regional allocation of carbon emission quotas in China: Evidence from the Shapley value method , 2014 .

[12]  Q. Cui,et al.  The evaluation of transportation energy efficiency: An application of three-stage virtual frontier DEA , 2014 .

[13]  Andrew John,et al.  An Overlapping Generations Model of Growth and the Environment , 1994 .

[14]  Yue‐Jun Zhang,et al.  Investigating the residential energy consumption behaviors in Beijing: a survey study , 2014, Natural Hazards.

[15]  Chuanguo Zhang,et al.  Panel estimation for transport sector CO2 emissions and its affecting factors: A regional analysis in China , 2013 .

[16]  P. Zhou,et al.  Total-factor carbon emission performance of the Chinese transportation industry: A bootstrapped non-radial Malmquist index analysis , 2015 .

[17]  P. W. Wilson,et al.  Estimation and inference in two-stage, semi-parametric models of production processes , 2007 .

[18]  Shinji Kaneko,et al.  Can environmental quality spread through institutions , 2013 .

[19]  Zhao Liu,et al.  Investigating the CO2 emission differences among China’s transport sectors and their influencing factors , 2015, Natural Hazards.

[20]  Peng Zhou,et al.  The effect of size-control policy on unified energy and carbon efficiency for Chinese fossil fuel power plants , 2014 .

[21]  Yue-Jun Zhang,et al.  The decomposition of energy-related carbon emission and its decoupling with economic growth in China , 2015 .

[22]  Carlos Pestana Barros,et al.  An evaluation of European airlines’ operational performance , 2009 .

[23]  Ning Zhang,et al.  Measuring ecological total-factor energy efficiency incorporating regional heterogeneities in China , 2015 .

[24]  A. López-Menéndez,et al.  Environmental costs and renewable energy: re-visiting the Environmental Kuznets Curve. , 2014, Journal of environmental management.

[25]  Jin-Li Hu,et al.  Total-factor energy efficiency of regions in China , 2006 .

[26]  Xiao Wei,et al.  Dynamic total factor carbon emissions performance changes in the Chinese transportation industry , 2015 .

[27]  Guanghui Zhou,et al.  A study of carbon dioxide emissions performance of China's transport sector , 2013 .

[28]  T. Nakata,et al.  Analysis of the market penetration of clean coal technologies and its impacts in China's electricity sector , 2009 .

[29]  Hong Li,et al.  Energy efficiency analysis on Chinese industrial sectors: an improved Super-SBM model with undesirable outputs , 2014 .

[30]  Yue‐Jun Zhang,et al.  Direct energy rebound effect for road passenger transport in China: A dynamic panel quantile regression approach , 2015 .

[31]  C. Kolstad,et al.  Do Lax Environmental Regulations Attract Foreign Investment? , 1998 .

[32]  Renzhi Liu,et al.  Study of the Energy and Environmental Efficiency of the Chinese economy based on a DEA Model , 2012 .

[33]  P. Zhou,et al.  Efficiency and abatement costs of energy-related CO2 emissions in China: A slacks-based efficiency measure , 2012 .

[34]  Ning Zhang,et al.  A note on the evolution of directional distance function and its development in energy and environmental studies 1997–2013 , 2014 .

[35]  B. W. Ang,et al.  Monitoring changes in economy-wide energy efficiency: From energy-GDP ratio to composite efficiency index , 2006 .

[36]  Ming Zhang,et al.  Decomposition analysis of energy consumption in Chinese transportation sector , 2011 .

[37]  Ning Zhang,et al.  Environmental efficiency analysis of transportation system in China:A non-radial DEA approach , 2013 .

[38]  Ming Zhang,et al.  Energy and exergy efficiencies in the Chinese transportation sector, 1980–2009 , 2011 .

[39]  Wei Zhang,et al.  China's regional energy and environmental efficiency: A DEA window analysis based dynamic evaluation , 2013, Math. Comput. Model..

[40]  Yue-Jun Zhang,et al.  Interpreting the dynamic nexus between energy consumption and economic growth: Empirical evidence from Russia , 2011 .

[41]  John Ozment,et al.  Economies of scale in the US airline industry , 2013 .

[42]  Qingqi Wei,et al.  A Quantitative Analysis of Carbon Emissions Reduction Ability of Transportation Structure Optimization in China , 2013 .

[43]  Abraham Charnes,et al.  Measuring the efficiency of decision making units , 1978 .

[44]  Yue-Jun Zhang,et al.  Decomposing the changes of energy-related carbon emissions in China: evidence from the PDA approach , 2013, Natural Hazards.

[45]  Ilhan Ozturk,et al.  Testing Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in Asian countries , 2015 .

[46]  B. W. Ang,et al.  Measuring environmental performance under different environmental DEA technologies , 2008 .

[47]  Peng Yuan,et al.  Measuring the environmental efficiency of the Chinese industrial sector: A directional distance function approach , 2013, Math. Comput. Model..

[48]  Yue-Jun Zhang,et al.  The impact of financial development on carbon emissions: An empirical analysis in China , 2011 .

[49]  Aydın Çelen,et al.  Efficiency and productivity (TFP) of the Turkish electricity distribution companies: An application of two-stage (DEA&Tobit) analysis , 2013 .

[50]  Peng Zhou,et al.  A non-radial DEA approach to measuring environmental performance , 2007, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[51]  Teuku Meurah Indra Mahlia,et al.  Current and future energy and exergy efficiencies in the Iran’s transportation sector , 2013 .

[52]  Guanghui Zhou,et al.  Measuring energy efficiency performance of China's transport sector: A data envelopment analysis approach , 2014, Expert Syst. Appl..

[53]  Donald R. McCubbin,et al.  The relationship between air pollution emissions and income: US Data , 1997, Environment and Development Economics.