No abstract

China's Energy-intensive Industry (EII) is characterized by high pollution, high energy consumption, and high emissions. It is essential to boost this sector's green total factor productivity (GTFP) in order to support the sustainable development of the China’s economy and help to achieve the objective of carbon neutrality. This work measures the evolution of GTFP in EII and its subsectors at provincial and regional level from 2001 to 2019, identifies the causes of these changes, and finally analyze the particular spatial aggregation effect of GTFP in EII. It is discovered that the GTFP of China's EII has significantly improved throughout the sample period and exhibits a spatial structure of "high in the coastal areas and low in the west and center". The main driver of GTFP growth for China's EII and its subsectors was technological advance. Smelting and pressing of on-ferrous metals (SPNM) was the industry with the most significant technological progress. Remarkable spatial correlations existed among the GTFP of EII at provincial level. The GTFP values of EII in coastal regions are relatively high and tend to benefit the adjacent provinces but there is a polarization effect in the Middle Reaches of Yellow River (YR). Finally, policy implications are provided for the sustainable development of China's EII.