Chinese urban energy and carbon congestion effects: A data envelopment analysis and materials balance approach

Energy conservation and carbon reduction (ECCR) is an important way to achieve carbon peak and carbon-neutral goals. The existence of energy and carbon congestion effects leads to energy resource waste and unnecessary carbon abatement costs. We construct a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model considering the materials balance principle (MBP), which avoids the problem of the mismatch between the carbon content of energy conservation and the improvement of carbon emission. Then, we apply this model to measure Chinese urban energy and carbon efficiency as well as congestion effects. The results show that the poorly performing cities have relatively large improved the potential in ECCR. The potential of ECCR comes not only from improving technical inefficiency but also from solving congestion problems caused by excessive investment. Especially, western cities should focus on the overinvestment problem and save resources to improve efficiency, while cities in the eastern region need to pay more attention to technological improvement to increase desirable output and reduce undesirable output. It provides implications government to formulate appropriate ECCR policies and reasonable resources arrangement. •We adopt the materials balance principle to characterize production possible sets.•We construct DEA models to measure energy and carbon congestion effects.•We divide energy and carbon improvement directions into technical capability and congestion effect.•The benchmarking proposed in this study avoids excessive inputs and infeasible guidance.•We analyse Chinese urban congestion effects and provide policy implications.