Efficiency assessment of green technology innovation of renewable energy enterprises in China: a dynamic data envelopment analysis considering undesirable output

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

The rapid development of renewable energy enterprises has produced important benefits for contemporary efforts to address serious environmental pollution and depletion of fossil energy resources. However, the environmental pollution that exists in the production and operation of enterprises has been ignored, and so an objective evaluation of this issue is becoming urgent. This paper established an evaluation index system for green technology innovation efficiency and used dynamic data envelopment analysis (DEA) considering undesirable output to measure the green technology innovation efficiency of renewable energy enterprises, and the improvement potential of ineffective enterprises was put forward. The results show that: (1) the green technology innovation of renewable energy enterprises needs to be greatly improved. The average efficiency score of sample was 0.385 over four years, and only 16 enterprises were found to operate effectively; (2) when effective and inefficient DMUs were compared, the latter were found to have significant output shortfalls, especially in environmental tax, and were found to show an improvement potential of 55.71 percent; (3) the efficiency analysis of different types of renewable energy enterprises found that the green technology innovation efficiency score of nuclear energy enterprises was the highest, and rapidly rose; (4) the green technology innovation efficiency of renewable energy enterprises in the western region greatly exceeded the efficiency of the eastern and central regions. The efficiency evaluation results could not only provide a guidance for central and local governances to optimize the structure of renewable energy sector, but also potentially provide a reference for the operation and management of renewable energy enterprises in China.

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Source: National Energy Administration; Foresight Industry Research Institute

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Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Shanghai Institute of Technology, Shanghai, 200235, China

    Tingting Jiang, Panjing Ji & Yi Shi

  2. China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Qiang Jin

  3. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Qiang Jin

  4. The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Zhen Ye

Authors
  1. Tingting Jiang
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  2. Panjing Ji
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  3. Yi Shi
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  4. Zhen Ye
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  5. Qiang Jin
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Contributions

Tingting Jiang was involved in conceptualization, writing—reviewing and editing, resources, supervision. Panjing Ji helped in writing—original draft preparation, methodology, data curation, validation, formal analysis, investigation. Yi Shi contributed to writing—reviewing and editing, supervision. Zhen Ye was involved in writing—reviewing and polishing, methodology. Qiang Jin helped in conceptualization, methodology, data curation, writing—Reviewing and Editing, supervision.

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Correspondence to Qiang Jin.

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Jiang, T., Ji, P., Shi, Y. et al. Efficiency assessment of green technology innovation of renewable energy enterprises in China: a dynamic data envelopment analysis considering undesirable output. Clean Techn Environ Policy (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-021-02044-9

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Keywords

  • Green technology innovation
  • Efficiency assessment
  • Data envelopment analysis
  • Renewable energy enterprises