Exploring the growth-adjusted energy-emission efficiency of transportation industry in China

Abstract China's transportation industry has achieved significant progress but also proved one of China's primary energy- and carbon-intensive industries. Under this circumstance, it is necessary to assess the level of energy-saving and emission reduction (ESER) of China's transportation industry. Therefore, based on the panel data of China's 30 provinces during 2008–2017, this paper develops a new DEA model to evaluate the growth-adjusted energy-emission efficiency of transportation industry in China. The results show that, first of all, the growth-adjusted energy-emission efficiency of China's transportation industry is approximately 0.5543 during the sample period, and the provinces with high efficiency in their transportation industries are mainly concentrated in the central region and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region; in particular, the central region takes the lead in low-carbon and energy-saving (LCES) technology of transportation industry. Second, during the sample period, the overall growth-adjusted energy-emission efficiency of China's transportation industry improves by 7.08% on average. The efficiency of the transportation industry in the eastern region improves the most, i.e., 28.99%. Finally, when evaluating the energy and/or environment-related efficiency of transportation industry, ignoring the transportation growth factors will underestimate the sustainability of transportation industry.