Measurement and decomposition of energy-saving and emissions reduction performance in Chinese cities

•We propose an energy-saving and emission reduction (ESER) performance index.•Inefficient management and technology gap are the two main sources of ESER performance lose.•The relationship between ESER performance and economic development is U-shaped.•The heterogeneities of production technologies related to ESER are universal in Chinese cities.•We propose four combinable strategies for improving ESER performance.

Taking into account the heterogeneity of production technologies across Chinese cities, we adopted a meta-frontier function and a non-radial directional distance function to construct an index that comprehensively evaluates the performance achieved by coupling energy-saving and emissions reduction. We also analyzed the theoretical factors leading to performance loss in energy-saving and emissions reduction. An empirical analysis of 209 Chinese cities suggests the following. First, the energy-saving and emissions reduction performances of Chinese cities are generally low, and the relationship between these variables and the economic development level is U-shaped. The results also suggest that cities place more importance on energy-saving than on emissions reduction. Second, the technology gap and insufficient management are the two primary sources of latent capacity that could contribute to energy-saving and emissions reduction in Chinese cities; insufficient management is the dominant factor in both high-income and lower-middle income cities. Four combinable strategies for energy-saving and emissions reduction are proposed. Third, the heterogeneities of production technologies related to energy-saving and emissions reduction are universal; the technological gap between the current and the best production technologies is seen in the largest of the middle income cities, and the gap is smallest in high-income cities.