Exploring the Role of Educational Human Capital and Green Finance in Total-Factor Energy Efficiency in the Context of Sustainable Development

The problem of lower total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE) has become a bottleneck for economic growth, and how to break this bottleneck and achieve high-quality development is one of the urgent issues to be solved nowadays. The study selects 30 provincial units in mainland China during 13 years, from 2008 to 2020; then adopts slack-based measure (SBM) method to measure the TFEE values of each province; and on this basis, finally explores the impact of educational human capital and green finance on regional TFEE in China; It concludes as follows: (1) The average value of TFEE in China is 0.776, which is at a lower level, and TFEE shows a gradual increase during the study period; the mean value decreases from east to west in descending order. (2) Educational human capital’s impact on the TFEE of the whole country and all regions is negative, and it does not show a significant U-shaped relationship; the effect of eastern region is the smallest; green finance’s impact on TFEE shows a U-shaped relationship, except in eastern regions, where it is not significant; and the coefficient of the central region is stronger. (3) Environmental regulation’s impact on TFEE show a U-shaped relationship in all regions; science and technology investment can improve TFEE all regions; and in the eastern region, it is most significant. Industrial structure is positively correlated with TFEE in all regions, and it has the most obvious effect on the improvement of TFEE in the central region; economic development can promote TFEE in all regions. This research has important theoretical implications for achieving regional TFEE improvement.