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• The factors that affecting urban carbon emissions efficiency (CEE) are explored. • The carbon emissions of 282 cities are estimated with the aid of nighttime light data. • Urban CEE has significant and positive spatial spillover effects. • Industrial agglomeration and collaboration are key to green production efficiency. This paper explores the factors that improve the efficiency of urban carbon emissions. Based on nighttime light data, the carbon emissions of 282 cities in China from 2004 to 2018 are estimated, and the carbon emission efficiency (CEE) is measured. The spatial autocorrelation results show that CEE in Chinese cities has significant and positive spatial spillover effects. The LISA low-low type cluster area of CEE presents an evolutionary trend of westward migration, and eventually formed two low-efficiency centers in the Central Plains city group and the Sichuan-Chongqing city group. The empirical results of the spatial Durbin error model show that urban population expansion, economic growth and R&D investment have effectively improved CEE, but industrial scale and agglomeration adversely affect CEE. In addition, human capital investment and foreign investment have not exerted their due green growth effects. Manufacturing agglomeration had a negative impact on local CEE, but had a warning effect on neighboring regions. Different from the manufacturing industry, the agglomeration of producer services industry can bring significant improvement to CEE, accompanied by a demonstration effect which can promote the CEE in adjacent regions. Further, this paper finds that developing the synergy between manufacturing and producer services industries can significantly restrain the negative effects of industry on CEE. This paper enriches the performance evaluation framework of low-carbon city development in theory, and varies the situations that previous researches only concerned about carbon emissions while ignoring emissions efficiency. This paper is a beneficial policy practice of the coordinated development of economic growth and ecological environmental protection in the regional coordinated development mechanism, which indicates that strengthening industrial collaboration can effectively improve the efficiency of green production in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]