Forest Carbon Sequestration Demand Based on Emissions Reduction in China’s Thermal Power and Steel Industries: Implications for Tobacco Industry

Objectives: China is a large country of tobacco production and consumption. In the construction and development of carbon market, the tobacco industry is expected to realizing energy conservation and emission reduction by participating in carbon trading, especially focusing on the forest carbon sequestration demand based on emissions reduction. Compared with the tobacco industry, the heavy pollution industries participate in the carbon market more deeply and widely. Therefore, this paper takes thermal power and steel industries as the research object, in order to provide some implications for the emission reduction path of tobacco industry. It considers the CO2 emissions intensity and marginal abatement costs (MAC) between China’s thermal power and steel industries during 2005–2017, and quantifies the forest carbon sequestration (FCS) demand level of these two industries to account for the role and potential of the forests for China’s green and low-carbon development. Methods: It uses a logistic algorithm to reflect the relationship among FCS demand, MAC and other influencing factors, and the cloud model to simulate FCS demand in different scenarios. Results: It shows an average decline of 54.06% and 56.05% in the carbon intensity of the two industries over the period. The average annualMAC are 11.82–25.55 CNY/ton across pilots, while the annual FCS demand expectation is 35 and 45 million tons for the thermal power and steel industries, respectively. If the MAC increases by 10%, the annual FCS demand will increase to 90 and 50 million tons, respectively. Other factors such as the prices of carbon emissions rights, carbon emission quotas, and industry output show little effect on FCS demand. Conclusion: The economic and technological efficiency of emissions reduction in different industries should be considered comprehensively, and that the consumer to producer subsidy for FCS in the carbon market should be adjusted for resource distribution optimization. This would promote emissions reduction, stimulate FCS demand, and improve the carbon market mechanism.