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Efficiency analysis of China’s energy utilization system based on the robust network DEA-Malmquist productivity index with common weights

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Abstract

Improving energy utilization is of great significance for energy saving and emissions reduction, so this paper explores the efficiency of China’s energy utilization. The energy utilization in this study is considered as a two-stage network system consisting of the energy processing and conversion stage and the economic growth stage instead of regarding it as a ‘black box’ without the internal transformation like in most existing studies. Uncertainty analysis of system efficiency is necessary due to the underlying data uncertainty in production variables which is evitable, whereas the energy or environmental efficiency in academia is normally evaluated on the premise of no data uncertainties. This paper uses robust optimization to handle the data uncertainty during efficiency analysis, involves the common set of weights method to assure the comparability of static and intertemporal efficiency, and then proposes the robust network data envelopment analysis-Malmquist productivity index with common weights. The proposed method is applied to the efficiency analysis of China’s energy utilization system during 2007–2018. Results show that the efficiency of the energy utilization system decreases except for 2012–2013, and the economic growth stage efficiency reduces by 12.32%, while the energy processing and conversion stage efficiency grows by 11.93%. Technical progress is the driver of efficiency improvement for both the energy utilization system and its two stages. Besides, the sensitivity analysis shows that the proposed method is resistant to a certain degree of data disturbance compared to the deterministic model not considering uncertainty.

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Acknowledgements

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The authors are sincerely grateful for the suggestions and comments were given by anonymous reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Center for Economic Research, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, China

    Jingjing Qu & Baohui Wang

  2. School of Management, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, China

    Xiaohong Liu

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  1. Jingjing Qu
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  2. Xiaohong Liu
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  3. Baohui Wang
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Correspondence to Jingjing Qu.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 4 and 5.

Table 4 The MPI of the energy utilization system between 2007 and 2008 with and without data uncertainty based on the deterministic model
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Table 5 The MPI of the energy utilization system between 2007 and 2008 with and without data uncertainty based on the robust model
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Qu, J., Liu, X. & Wang, B. Efficiency analysis of China’s energy utilization system based on the robust network DEA-Malmquist productivity index with common weights. Environ Dev Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-03894-7

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