Analysis of CO₂ emission performance of China’s thermal power industry: a meta-frontier Malmquist-Luenberger approach with fixed-sum CO₂ emissions

AbstractThis study combines the general equilibrium efficient frontier data envelopment analysis (GEEFDEA) approach, which handles fixed-sum CO2 emissions, with the meta-frontier Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index (MMLPI). We use this novel technique to measure the CO2 emission performance (CEP) of 30 of China’s provincial-level thermal power industries during 2006–2020, both statically and dynamically, and reveal the drivers of CEP changes. Our proposed approach considers the fixed-sum feature of CO2 emissions and also captures the impact of technology heterogeneity. The empirical results show that the CEP of China’s thermal power industry was good during the sample period, showing average annual increases of 2.42%, mainly due to technical efficiency gains and technological progress. The CEP of most provinces grew at various rates, between 0.23% and 8.38%; and the drivers of CEP changes differ between provinces. Policy implications are discussed, such as the need to strengthen technology innovation and optimize production processes to improve CEP.Keywords: CO2 emission performancemeta-frontier Malmquist-Luenberger productivity indexfixed-sum CO2 emissionsthermal power industrydata envelopment analysis Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Additional informationFundingThis research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 72101246, 71901225 and 72271247), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2019M662210) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WK2040000024).