An interprovincial evaluation of industrial energy and environment efficiency: what drives China to make progress in sustainability?

China has made huge economic achievements based on industry. Heterogeneity, resulting from the industrial structure, energy endowment, and infrastructure among regions, has always been neglected on industrial performance evaluation. This paper focuses on provincial industrial heterogeneity to make a study. Firstly, meta-frontier slack-based measure is employed to rate industrial energy and environment efficiency of China. Besides, spatial evolution characteristics of efficiencies are described by global Moran's I and local Moran's I index. Taking the spatial correlation effect of efficiency into consideration, factors driving Chinese industrial energy and environment efficiency are analyzed and distinguished by quantitative regression and spatial Durbin model. It finds that (1) technical inefficiency and managerial inefficiency mainly attribute to the inefficiency of industrial energy and environment. (2) Chinese industrial energy and environment efficiency presents a stable spatial agglomeration as "high aggregation, low aggregation." It is necessary and indispensable for provinces and regions to cooperate to enhance efficiency. (3) Each province has a distinct driving mechanism of efficiency. The improvement policy of efficiency should be diversified for different provinces.