Level and Drivers of China’s Construction Industry Energy Efficiency under Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Taking the carbon dioxide emissions of energy utilization in construction industry (CI) as an unwanted output, this study builds an index system for construction industry energy efficiency (CIEE) under carbon dioxide emissions, adopts the super-SBM to assess the CI energy efficiencies (CIEEs) of 30 Chinese provincial administrative regions (PARs) in 2005–2018, and further examines the influencing factors of the CIEEs with the panel data model. The main results show that, during the study period, only a few PARs (e.g., Beijing, Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, and Tianjin) realized the optimal CIEEs and most PARs failed to optimize their CIEEs. After dividing China into three parts, the CIEEs of oriental, middle, and occidental parts followed a trend like an inverted U in the study period and their CIEEs first increased and then decreased with the elapse of time. There were significant differences in CIEE between the three parts: the oriental part realized the greatest CIEE, the middle part came at the second, and the occidental part ended up at the bottom. Empirical results demonstrate that CIEE is significantly promoted by enterprise scale, property right structure, and environmental regulation, greatly inhibited by economic growth and technical level and not greatly affected by production level or urbanization level.