Ecological total-factor energy efficiency of China's energy intensive industries

This paper uses a meta-frontier slack-based DEA model to measure the ecological total-factor energy efficiency as well as the energy conservation potential of China's four energy intensive subsectors. We incorporate both desirable and undesirable output together in the period, 2000-2013. The conclusions are: firstly, under the meta-frontier, the four subsectors of energy intensive industries have low average level of ecological total-factor energy efficiencies. They are 0.137, 0.212, 0.238, and 0.307 in the non-metallic mineral products manufacturing industry, raw chemical materials and chemical products manufacturing industry, smelting and pressing of ferrous metals industry, and smelting and pressing of non-ferrous metals industry, respectively. Secondly, the ecological energy efficiency in East China is the highest among three regions. Central China and West China are behind, but they are extremely close to each other. Thirdly, East China almost has no technology gap pertaining to energy efficiency, while Central China and West China almost have the same gap. Finally, Sichuan is considered to be the best province in West China under group frontier due to its perform in the three energy intensive subsectors. For Central and East China, no province has higher ecological energy efficiency in more than two energy intensive subsectors. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.