Research on low-carbon economic evaluation of non-ferrous metals enterprise based on combination weighting-TOPSIS method

The non-ferrous metals industry is a crucial basic industry for the national economy, as well as an important sector in energy consumption and carbon emissions. Promoting low-carbon economic development in the non-ferrous metals industry is an important part of China’s low-carbon transition. Accurately assessing the level of low-carbon economic development of non-ferrous metals enterprises and subsequently proposing targeted improvement suggestions are of great significance for promoting the low-carbon development of the non-ferrous metals industry. To address the challenge of allocating index weights reasonably in the low-carbon economic evaluation of non-ferrous metals enterprises, this study establishes a low-carbon economic evaluation index system for non-ferrous metals enterprises that includes 18 indicators from five aspects. Moreover, based on the two methods of interval analytic hierarchy process and entropy weight method, the weight of index combination is calculated. The data from 2019 to 2023 are selected, and the evaluation value of low-carbon economic development of non-ferrous metals enterprises is calculated by TOPSIS comprehensive evaluation method. In addition, the obstacle degree function is introduced to identify the key obstacle factors. The results highlight significant impacts from factors like energy consumption intensity, total asset growth rate, and R&D investment ratio. The comprehensive evaluation value of low-carbon economy shows a fluctuating growth trend and is in a relatively low-carbon development state. The research results are largely consistent with the actual development of the enterprise, verifying the feasibility of the evaluation model. Further analysis shows that the main obstacle factors affecting the development of the low-carbon economy of enterprises in 2023 are the total energy consumption, the amount of waste generated per unit revenue, and other indicators. Based on this, non-ferrous metal enterprises need to improve their industrial output capacity, reduce the proportion of non-renewable energy consumption, and promote the progress and innovation of low-carbon technology. Enterprises can identify the weak links in the transition process of low-carbon economy, thereby enhancing their level of low-carbon economic development.