An empirical study on the effciency and influencing factors of the photovoltaic industry in China and an analysis of its influencing factors

Abstract

The photovoltaic (PV) industry in China is still in the early stage of development and is extremely unbalanced; breakthroughs in key technologies are necessary. To achieve high effciency and sustainable development, it is important to identify the bottleneck of the whole industry chain through the analysis of overall industrial technical effciency. Based on the current situation of the PV industry, this study builds the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to respectively evaluate the effciency of PV devices and power generation in the PV industrial chain. The Tobit model is used to conduct an empirical analysis of the factors affecting the effciency of the PV industry. The results show that the industrial effciency of PV devices is at a medium level and that it is necessary to strengthen regulation and awareness at the industrial scale. However, the PV power generation industry as a whole is at a low effciency level, especially the inadequate technical level, which has a negative impact on the improvement of industrial effciency. Finally, countermeasures and suggestions at the enterprise and government level are put forward to improve the effciency of the PV industry in China.