Economy and carbon dioxide emissions effects of energy structures in the world: Evidence based on SBM-DEA model

Abstract Nowadays, the increasing global warming phenomenon caused by large carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions has a huge impact on the economic and social sustainable development in the world. And CO2 emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil energy, such as oil, natural gas and coal. Therefore, a novel economy and CO2 emissions evaluation model based on the slacks-based measure integrating the data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) is proposed to analyze and optimize energy structures of some countries and regions in the world. The consumption of oil, natural gas and coal are inputs of the proposed method. In addition, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) value is the desirable output and CO2 emission is the undesirable output. Then the economy and CO2 emissions evaluation model of some countries and regions in the world is built. The results show that the overall efficiency of developed countries and regions is higher than that of developing countries. Moreover, due to the optimal configuration of slack variables of inputs and the undesirable output, the efficiency values of some inefficient countries and regions can be improved greatly. Furthermore, whether in 2017 or 2018, the average efficiency values of Europe and Oceania are both relatively high, and these two years average efficiency values of Asia are all the lowest among the five continents.