Study on Influence of Export on Total Factor Energy Efficiency: An Empirical Analysis from Perspective of 37 Industrial Sectors in China

This paper, based on the DEA-SBM method, calculates the total factor energy efficiency of China's 37 industrial sectors from 1990 to 2011 in the presence of carbon emission constraint. Then it uses static and dynamic panel data model estimation methods to study the effect of export on the energy efficiency in the industrial sectors. The findings show that energy efficiency has obvious fluctuations around the year 2003, and then the energy efficiency presented a steady tendency of rising, but it remained low at about 0.379. The empirical analysis of the whole industrial sector shows that the effect of export on the industrial sectors is significantly negative, indicating that the increase in the export reduces the energy efficiency. The empirical analysis of the industrial sectors with high and low energy efficiency, high and low energy consumption and the analysis of the heavy and light industry sectors show that, the increase in export reduces the energy efficiency and the conclusions claim high robustness. The chemical industry, ferrous metal processing industry and the non-metal products industry consume 14.17%, 13.97% and 9.75% of the industrial energy with the proportions of 3.36%, 2.18% and 1.85% in the industrial export respectively. Therefore, the export of industry sectors with high energy consumption contributes mainly to the reduction in the energy efficiency of industrial sectors in China.