Measuring carbon dioxide emission performance in Chinese provinces: A parametric approach

This paper looks at carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the point of view of production theory and proposes a new total factor CO2 emissions performance index. This is done using directional distance function followed by stochastic frontier analysis techniques in order to estimate the index. Based on this, it studies on CO2 emission performance, emission reduction potential and influences of regulatory policies in Chinese provinces. The main conclusions include the following: (1) CO2 emission performance in each province is high in southeastern coastal areas but low in central and western inland regions with differences increasing rapidly after 2001. (2) The relationship between CO2 emission performance and emission reduction potential can be divided into four types; high performance-high potential, high performance-low potential, low performance-high potential and low performance-low potential. (3) Regulations concerning emission reduction do not sacrifice efficiency but actually facilitate long-term CO2 emission performance.