Energy-saving and emission reduction potential of the tobacco industry: A case study of China's 18 cigarette enterprises

Abstract To evaluate the energy-saving and emission reduction potential of China's tobacco industry, this paper introduces RAM-DEA models to evaluate the energy and CO2 emission efficiencies of 18 cigarette companies in China, compared with four of the leading multinational cigarette companies from 2009 to 2016. The results show the following: (1) The average energy and environmental efficiency of Chinese cigarette enterprises is only 0.373, the gap of the comprehensive efficiency between Chinese cigarette manufactures and the technological frontier of the world is big, but it is gradually shrinking. (2) The energy-saving and CO2 emission reduction potential of Chinese cigarette companies are 57.2% and 68.1%, respectively, and the annual average comprehensive energy-saving and emission reduction quantities are 3.466 million MWH and 1.744 million tons. The energy-saving and emission reduction potential based on a scale efficiency improvement is relatively large. (3) The CO2 emission efficiency gap of Chinese cigarette companies at domestic and foreign production levels is 25.5%, and it is larger than the energy efficiency gap, 14.1%, due to the high proportion of electric energy consumption. (4) Scale efficiency improvements and energy structure optimization are the main ways to save energy and reduce CO2 emissions in the future.