Abstract:Carbon emission quota allocation serves as the foundation for establishing a carbon trading system. As the world's largest energy consumer and carbon emitter, China faces a critical challenge in efficiently allocating carbon quotas to achieve its overall energy conservation and carbon reduction goals. In particular, the urgent issue lies in how to reasonably distribute the national carbon reduction targets among regions. With the goal of maximizing the overall cross-efficiency, a fixed cost allocation model based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) cross-efficiency was constructed. The sub-target planning proposed by the model ensures the uniqueness of cross-efficiency and achieves the optimal matching of both China’s overall carbon quota efficiency and the carbon quota efficiency of each region. Applying this model to the allocation of carbon emission allowances across 30 regions in China in 2030, and the emission reduction pressure for each region is further assessed by comparing the allocated quotas with the projected carbon emissions for that year. The empirical results show no extremely unreasonable values. Based on emission reduction pressure, the regions were classified into four categories. Regions in Category I face no carbon reduction pressure, while those in Category Ⅱ are on the verge of experiencing such pressure. Category Ⅲ regions encounter moderate pressure, whereas CategoryⅣ regions are under severe pressure to reduce emissions. According to different types of regions, targeted policy recommendations are proposed.