The change in energy and carbon emissions efficiency after afforestation in China by applying a modified dynamic SBM model

Although China is the largest energy consumer and carbon emitter in the world, it also has experienced the largest increase in green leaf area, as evidenced from 2007 to 2017 when it hit 66.156 million hectares, accounting for 6.891% of the country’s total land area. This study considered carbon sequestration in afforestation and introduced it as an exogenous variable into a modified dynamic Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) model to find the change in China’s energy and carbon emissions efficiency. Different from previous studies, China’s western region had the best efficiency value of 0.718, while the eastern and central regions were 0.699 and 0.590. In some provinces with more restoration of trees, their efficiency value changed greatly, such as Yunnan, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia and Guizhou. The results highlighted that afforestation has become the most effective strategy for China to improve energy and carbon emissions efficiency and for dealing with climate change, which can be ensured through carbon tax and market mechanism policies. •By introducing exogenous variables based on traditional methods of energy and carbon emission research.•Afforestation in the central and western regions will be conducive to the improvement of China’s overall energy.•Western China has the best performance, in which it is better in absorbing CO2 by implementing afforestation.