Dynamic energy performance evaluation of Chinese textile industry

The rapid growth of population and economy will result in a substantial increase in textile production and consumption. Due to the uneven management level and especially the major fossil fuel production process, the Chinese textile industry needs to be transformed and upgraded for emission-reduction as a national backbone industry. Using a global meta-frontier approach founded on a non-radial distance function, energy performance is measured at the provincial level from 1985 to 2016. Given the study’s long interval, all data samples in different statistical calibers are successively adjusted and standardized. From different spatial and time scales, the dynamic energy efficiency goes up and becomes more balanced over time in three geographical regions of China. Examined by statistics, the study also reveals that during the implementation of low-carbon textile policies, the energy performance improved significantly, which mainly benefits from speeding up of technological innovation. Besides, the dynamic performance of the eastern region rises by 11.347%, while the central and western regions obtain a higher growth rate of 27.295% and 32.980% respectively. With the decomposition of the dynamic performance index into three separate components, policy-makers should prioritize the appropriate policies to attain environmental management goals considering provincial heterogeneity.