Comprehensive performance evaluation of coordinated development of industrial economy and its air pollution control

Tingkun Li; Yufen Zhang; Xiaohui Bi; Jianhui Wu; Mingyang Chen; Bin Luo; Yinchang Feng

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17442

Comprehensive performance evaluation of coordinated development of industrial economy and its air pollution control

Heliyon. 2023 Jun 17;9(7):e17442. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17442. eCollection 2023 Jul.

Authors

Tingkun Li^{1

2

3}, Yufen Zhang¹, Xiaohui Bi¹, Jianhui Wu¹, Mingyang Chen^{2

3}, Bin Luo^{2

3}, Yinchang Feng¹

Affiliations

¹ State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Urban Ambient Air Particulate Matter Pollution Prevention and Control, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Urban Transport Emission Research, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin, China.
² Research Center for Energy and Climate, Sichuan Academy of Environmental Policy and Planning, Chengdu, China.
³ Assessment and Research Center for Pollution and Carbon Reduction, Tianfu Yongxing Laboratory, Chengdu, China.

Abstract

Exploring coordinated pathways that can promote not only the sustainable development of the industrial economy but also air quality is of great significance for the prevention and control of air pollution in China. Currently, the joint development pathways of the industrial economy-environment nexus remain unclear and poorly evaluated. In this study, we proposed a comprehensive performance evaluation combining objective and subjective weighting to identify industrial enterprises' economic-environment nexus benefits. It would be one of the most important steps to explore the coordinated pathways. Based on data envelopment analysis (DEA), the proposed method integrated with the index integration was used to evaluate the comprehensive performances of 41 industrial sectors in China's 13th five-year plan (2016-2020). Evaluation results showed that the comprehensive performances of the economy-environment nexus of the industrial sectors varied significantly, with the five-year average comprehensive technical efficiency (TE) of 0.11-1. Overall, the best two performances were realized by the industries of equipment manufacturing and living consumption, whereas the worst one belonged to the industry of bulk raw materials, with average comprehensive TE values of 0.50, 0.43, and 0.19, respectively. The results of the quantitative evaluation were consistent with those of the qualitative analysis in terms of the developmental status of the industrial sectors. According to the analyses of pure technical efficiency and scale effect, the proposed method identified the industrial sectors with the highest developmental value and with the highest need to control air pollution. Compared with those of the original DEA model, the results of the proposed method showed pronounced differences in terms of the performances of industrial sectors with high energy consumption and high particulate matter (PM) emissions and with low energy consumption and low PM emissions. The proposed evaluation method combining the weighting was suitable for identifying the comprehensive performance of the industrial economy-environment nexus and provides the basis for the prevention and control of air pollution.

Keywords: Air pollution control; Combined weighting; Coordinated development; Industrial sector; Performance evaluation.