Inequality in Fossil Fuel Power Plants in China: A Perspective of Efficiency and Abatement Cost

Quantifying the shadow price (SP) of CO2 emissions is key to achieving China’s “double carbon” targets. Considering technology heterogeneity, this study applies stochastic frontier analysis combined with meta-frontier estimate environmental technical efficiency (ETE) and SP for fossil fuel power plants from 2005 2015. This approach overcomes lack statistical inference consistency traditional methods improves reliability results. The main results are as follows: (a) average ETE 0.9444, indicating that inefficient production accounts 5.66%. difference in between central local groups significant. (b) national 266.8 US dollars per ton, which much higher than carbon emission trading system. result implies need design a mechanism. (c) distribution shows obvious corporation geographical characteristics closely related level regional economic development. Finally, findings provide policy implications improvement abatement costs determination prices.