Research on the Measurement of Urban Carbon Emission Efficiency Based on Super-SBM-DEA

Carbon emissions efficiency (CEE) has been a hot research topic in these years as China strives for its carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals. However, improving CEE also compromises the economic growth in real-world scenarios. Improving CEE without compromising economic growth is hence imperative to reach our goals of energy conservation, emissions reduction, and sustainable development. Existing slacks-based measure and data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) models suffer limitations in identifying the regional differences in CEE. Thus, in the present work, a super-SBM-DEA model is proposed to measure CEE and identify regional heterogeneity. With panel data from 16 cities in Anhui as the research samples, the urban CEE was empirically studied. The result indicates regional differences in the CEE: cities with a higher CEE mainly relied on green industries for economic growth, whereas cities with a lower CEE were largely constrained by an underdeveloped economy. Per the research findings, it was recommended that the government accelerate the development of a green economy and enhance regional economic levels; introduce high technology to drive development, achieving coordinated economic and environmental development.