Environmental Efficiency of Construction Industry with Considerations to Carbon Emission: A Case Study in Henan, China

Abstract

Low energy utilization is observed in China due to the extensive economic growth mode, which further leads to considerable energy wastes and environmental pollution. The construction industry plays an important role in the national economic development of China and consumes tremendous materials; thus, this industry discharges abundant CO2. The energy consumption growth rate of the construction industry in China is far higher than the national energy consumption growth rate, resulting in the prominent situation of high energy consumption and low yield. A case study based on Henan Province, China, was conducted to further analyze the environmental efficiency of the construction industry. An index system was established by using the Super-slack-based model (Super-SBM). This system chooses the following: labor, energy, capital, and technology of the construction industry as the input variables, economic output as the output variable, and carbon emissions as the unexpected output. This system was also used to investigate the energy efficiency of the construction industry in Henan Province from 2008 to 2019. Results demonstrated that the construction industry in Henan Province has failed to eliminate the extensive development mode thus far. The environmental efficiency of the construction industry presents a fluctuating growth with a mean of 1.048, which generally remains at a relatively low level. The numbers of construction machines and enterprises in the construction industry have redundancy in approximately 50% of the years. Thus, this study can provide some positive references to enrich the evaluation index system and estimation model of energy efficiency of the construction industry, which includes unexpected output. Moreover, the current study can provide a comprehensive understanding of the environmental efficiency of the construction industry in a province in China and realize reasonable allocation of construction industrial resources.