Impact of carbon lock-in on green economic efficiency: Evidence from Chinese provincial data

Carbon lock-in is a major obstacle to transforming carbon-based energy systems toward carbon peaking and neutralization, affecting the green economy. However, its impacts and paths on green development are unclear, and it is difficult to represent carbon lock-in using a single indicator. This study measures five types of carbon lock-ins and their comprehensive effect using the entropy index of 22 indirect indicators in 31 Chinese provinces during 1995–2021. Moreover, green economic efficiencies are measured using a fuzzy slacks-based model considering undesirable outputs. The panel Tobit models are used to test the impacts of carbon lock-ins on green economic efficiencies and their decompositions. Our results show that provincial carbon lock-ins in China range from 0.20 to 0.80, with notable type and regional differences. Overall carbon lock-in levels are similar, but the severity of different carbon lock-in types varies, with social behavior being the most serious. However, the overall trend of carbon lock-ins is declining. Low pure green economic efficiencies, rather than scale efficiencies, contribute to China's worrisome green economic efficiencies, but they are decreasing and accompanied by regional gaps. Carbon lock-in hinders green development, but a specific analysis is needed for different carbon lock-in types and development phases. It is biased to assume that all carbon lock-ins hinder sustainable development, as some are even necessary. The impacts of carbon lock-in on green economic efficiency depend more on its effect on technology than on scale change. Implementing various measures to unlock carbon and maintaining reasonable levels of carbon lock-in can promote high-quality development. This paper may promote the development of new unlocking CLI measures and sustainable development policies.