Green Total-Factor Energy Efficiency of Construction Industry and Its Driving Factors: Spatial-Temporal Heterogeneity of Yangtze River Economic Belt in China

With the proposal of the “carbon peak, carbon neutral“ goal, energy efficiency has become one of the key means to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction at this stage. The construction industry, as a cornerstone of China’s economy, is characterized by serious overcapacity, energy waste, and pollution. As a result, academic research on its energy efficiency is gaining traction. This paper employed the Super-EBM model considering undesirable output to evaluate the green total-factor energy efficiency of the construction industry (CIGTFEE) in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 2003 to 2018. The spatial-temporal evolution characteristics and spatial heterogeneity of CIGTFEE were analyzed in detail through geospatial analysis. Finally, the driving factors of CIGTFEE were analyzed through a spatial econometric model. The results indicated that, during the sample research period, the CIGTFEE showed a holistic growth trend with volatility. By region, the downstream CIGTFEE grew sharply until 2006 and then remained fairly stable, while the midstream conformed to the “M” trend and the upstream region showed an inverted u-shaped trend; From the perspective of spatial differentiation, the CIGTFEE in YREB shows a significant spatial agglomeration situation, while the spatial agglomeration degree weakened. It existed a ladder-shaped change trend, with the regional average CIGTFEE from high to low levels as follows: Downstream, Midstream, and Upstream, and showed an obvious polarization in the upstream and downstream. From the analysis of the driving factors, CIGTFEE is significantly promoted by economic growth, energy structure, and human capital and suppressed by urbanization level, yet the impact of technological progress and the level of technology and equipment is not significant. In summary, province-specific policies based on spatial and temporal heterogeneity were proposed to improve the CIGTFEE of YREB.