Assessing Urban Carbon Emission Efficiency in China: Based on the Global Data Envelopment Analysis

Identifying the trends and distributions of regional carbon emission efficiency would be crucial for achieving the goal of low carbon cities. This paper evaluates and decomposes the carbon emission efficiency of Chinese cities by using the methods of global data envelopment analysis. The results reveal that there is a trend of improvement for the carbon emission efficiency in Chinese cities during the research period, meanwhile there appears to be some regional disparities. Subsequently, the effect of technological progress on urban carbon emission efficiency is more significant than that of efficiency improvement. Finally, this paper also investigates some influencing factors of the urban carbon emission efficiency.