Frontiers in Energy Research (Feb 2021)

PCA-SBM Model Green Urbanization Performance Assessment in China

  • Rui Chen,
  • Haochun Lu,
  • Haochun Lu,
  • Haochun Lu,
  • Haochun Lu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2021.637820
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9

Abstract

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China’s urbanization over the past thirty years has been the fastest in history and has led to significant challenges in balancing urbanization and energy use. As a result, this study proposed a comprehensive green urbanization assessment index system considering energy use and environment protection together. To be specific, principal component analysis was applied to eliminate redundant information, and a slacks-based measure model was used to evaluate urbanization efficiencies. Meanwhile, with super efficiency incorporated, the proposed model enabled to distinguish the DMU from DMUs with same efficiency value, further, a projection analysis was conducted to direct the improvement of the identified inefficient decision-making units (DMUs). Finally, the comprehensive green urbanization index system was applied to a western Chinese province (Sichuan Province) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed models, from which it was found that the overall green urbanization efficiency in Sichuan province was 81.54%, due to an input distribution imbalance and low technical efficiency.

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