Investigating the transformation efficiency of scientific and technological achievements in China's equipment manufacturing industry under the low-carbon economy

Abstract

The development of a low-carbon economy is an inevitable choice for the world to coordinate industrial economic growth and environmental issues actively. At the same time, science and technology are the cornerstones for the development of a low-carbon economy. The equipment manufacturing industry (EMI) in China is known as the base of the low-carbon sector. Still, the research of coordinating industry carbon emission and economic growth from the perspective of science and technology is insufficient. For this reason, this work comprehensively analyzed the economic development and carbon emission of China's EMI. The DEA (data envelopment analysis) Malmquist method was used to measure the transformation efficiency of scientific and technological achievements of the EMI from 2009 to 2017. The results can show that: (1) the economic benefits of China's EMI were increasing year by year, but the growth rate is declining. With the optimization of industrial structure, the energy consumption and carbon emission of the industry have improved, but there is still a large gap between different sectors; (2) the achievement transformation of EMI decreases by year due to the influence of technological progress efficiency; and (3) in terms of sector data efficiency in 2017, there is redundancy in the investment of general EMI (B2) and special EMI (B3). This work can provide a reference for the development of countries dominated by industry and to jointly realize the sustainable development of the world economy.