Energy and carbon performance improvement in China's mining Industry:Evidence from the 11th and 12th five-year plan

Highlights: • The non-radial directional distance function is adopted for efficiency analysis. • Using metafrontier Malmquist index to analyze driving factors. • The mining sector in all regions shows the catch-up effect during the 12th FYP. • The BPC index does not reflect the innovation effect during the 11th FYP. • Developing overseas markets should be included in policy suggestions. The mining industry is one of the basic industries in China that ensures energy security. However, the mining industry's energy consumption is huge. It is, therefore, significant to improve the mining industry's energy and carbon performance. This paper adopts the non-radial directional distance function (NDDF) to measure the energy and carbon performance (ECP) of China's mining industry. It uses the metafrontier Malmquist index (MML) to disassemble the mining industry's ECP into three components to explore the driving factors during the 11th and 12th five-year plan. The empirical results reflect that although the mining industry's ECP is improved during two plan periods, technological progress does not have an obvious contribution to the ECP improvement. This means the mining sector lacks the innovation effect. As for policymaking, the government should support the mining sector's technological innovation, reduce surplus capacity, and open mineral markets.