Study on the Allocation of SO2 Emission Rights in the Yangtze River Delta City Agglomeration Region of China Based on Efficiency and Feasibility

Rational allocation of pollutant emission rights is one of the ways to promote the sustainable economy and environment of cities. Based on the overall goal of emission reduction in the 13th Five-Year Plan proposed by China, the Yangtze River Delta city agglomeration with high homogeneity is selected as the research object, and three allocation models of SO2 emission rights are established using data envelopment analysis (DEA), shadow price and information entropy. The fairness of the three allocation schemes is evaluated by the per capita relative deprivation coefficient (RDC). The study shows that: (1) the three-objective information entropy allocation model takes into account the principles of maximum output-input efficiency, protection of regional GDP and scheme fairness, and the relative deprivation coefficients (RDCs) are all less than 0.5, which can be used as the best scheme for SO2 emission rights allocation in the Yangtze River Delta city agglomeration. (2) Cities in Jiangsu province need to reduce SO2 emissions. (3) Taking city agglomerations with high homogeneity as the research object has more practical significance, which can provide policy advice for sustainable development of similar city agglomerations.