Assessing the efficiency and the justice of energy transformation for the United States of America, China, and the European Union

Abstract A conceptual framework is constructed to discuss the Energy Transformation Efficiency and the Energy Transformation Justice for Carbon Neutrality and sustainable development. Both the Slack Based Measure‐based Efficiency Model and the improved Energy Transformation Justice Model are applied to measure the transformation efficiency and the transformation justice respectively. Then for empirical analysis, the influencing mechanism of the energy transformation efficiency and justice on the energy economy is analyzed by using the panel data of the USA, China and the EU from 2000 to 2020 with the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR). The results reveal that: The energy transformation efficiency requires a subtle balance between three essential inputs and two important outputs, while the energy transformation justice associated with five dimensions can describe both the equal opportunity and the procedural justice. Both the energy transformation efficiency and the energy transformation justice are improving year by year, and they are not completely mutually exclusive at present. As far as the performance is concerned, the EU is the best of all at both the efficiency and the justice, the USA is better than China at the justice, but China is better than the USA at the efficiency. In terms of interrelationship, there is an obvious Regime Switching Effect when the energy transformation efficiency and justice influencing on the energy economy growth. Furthermore, note that the state transition of both the efficiency and the justice can be limited by the economic situation of energy sector in each economy.