Measuring regional energy efficiencies in China: a meta-frontier SBM-Undesirable approach

Under the framework of meta-frontier, we employ the slacks-based measurement (SBM)-Undesirable approach to explore China’s provincial energy efficiencies and meta-technology ratios (MTRs) of eight major economic regions during 2000–2014. The results obtained show that: firstly, the SBM-Undesirable model involving a undesirable output of CO2 emission is more reasonable than the SBM model for measuring China’s provincial energy efficiencies. Secondly, there are severe imbalances of energy efficiencies between regions due to their imbalanced energy technologies. Thirdly, energy efficiencies of the southern, eastern and northern coastal regions are high with advanced energy technologies. Energy technology gaps between regional and meta-technologies of southwest, eastern coastal and northern coastal regions are shrinking; however, the ones of remaining regions are widening. Fourthly, energy technology of overall China has a U-shaped trend; however, the ones of provinces in each region are characterized as a club convergence.