The Unified Efficiency Evaluation of China’s Industrial Waste Gas Considering Pollution Prevention and End-Of-Pipe Treatment

Abstract

With the deepening of industrialization and urbanization in China, air pollution has become the most serious environmental issue due to huge energy consumption, which threatens the health of residents and the sustainable development of the country. Increasing attention has been paid to the efficiency evaluation of industrial system due to its fast development and severe air pollution emissions, but the efficiency evaluation on China’s industrial waste gas still has scope for improvement. This paper proposes a global non-radial Network Data Envelopment Analysis (NDEA) model from the perspective of pollution prevention (PP) and end-of-pipe treatment (ET), to explore the potential reduction of generation and emission of air pollutants in China’s industrial system. Given the differences of different air pollution treatment capacities, the ET stage is further subdivided into three parallel sub-stages, corresponding to SO2, NOX, and soot and dust (SD), respectively. Then, grey relation analysis (GRA) is adopted to figure out the key factor affecting the unified efficiency. The main findings are summarized as follows: firstly, the unified efficiency of China’s industrial waste gas underperformed nationwide, and most provinces had the potential to reduce the generation and emission of industrial waste gas. Secondly, the PP efficiency outperformed the ET efficiency in many provinces and the efficiency gap between two stages increasingly narrowed except in 2014. Thirdly, the unified efficiency in the eastern area performed well, while the area disparities increased significantly after 2012. Fourthly, significant differences were found in three ET efficiencies and the ET efficiency of NOX was higher than that of SO2 and SD in the sample period. Finally, the results of GRA indicated that different air pollutants had distinct influence on the improvement of the unified efficiency in three areas. To promote the unified efficiency of industrial waste gas, some pertinent policy suggestions are put forward from the perspectives of sub-stages, air pollutants and areas.

Industrial structure, high-quality development of logistics industry and the economy

“…The demographic dividend is particularly important for the high-quality economic development of a region. With the continuous deepening of industrialization and urbanization in China, air pollution has become the most serious environmental problem, threatening the health and sustainable development of residents [ 1 , 34 ]. The rapid growth of China’s economy and industrial upgrading have led to major changes in the employment structure, which often requires more skilled labor [ 35 ].…”

Panel Data Analysis of Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction On High-Quality Development of Logistics Industry in Yangtze River Delta of China

“…The demographic dividend is therefore particularly important for the economic growth of a region. With the deepening of industrialization and urbanization in China, air pollution caused by huge energy consumption has become the most serious environmental problem, threatening the health of residents and sustainable development (Tang et al, 2020).…”