Energy efficiency and technology gap of enterprises in Guangdong province: A meta-frontier directional distance function analysis

Our study proposes to capture the heterogeneities and estimate the energy efficiency, technology gap and carbon emission performance of enterprises in Guangdong province. We employ group-frontier and meta-frontier directional distance function to analyze the technical efficiency based on the groups categorized in terms of both geographical boundaries and industrial classification system. The estimation indicates that enterprises in Mountainous region have a lower mean efficiency and a wider range of efficiency than the others, they have the largest potential to contribute to CO2 reduction, which can be further reduced by 35%. A small part of the enterprises in Industries sector have the lowest efficiency, although the sector has the smallest technology gap ratio. Comparatively, Information Technology sector has the highest efficiency (mean value is 0.95), efficiency of Energy sector is the lowest (mean value is 0.65). (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.