2016 Volume 95 Issue 5 Pages 448-456
The Thai government has taken various political measures to promote the use of gasohol as an alternative to fossil-derived gasoline since 2003. The objective of the present study is to evaluate gasohol promotion policy of Thailand in the past from socio-economic and environmental perspectives. A modified input-output model is used to evaluate effects of an increase in gasohol use on the Thai economy from the three aspects, namely, domestic industry development, GHG emission, and employee income. The model is built on the Thai inputoutput table for the year 2005, by disaggregating the original sectors and adding new sectors related to gasohol production. The principal findings are as follows: first, an increase in gasohol use encourages the development of domestic industries through domestic inter-industrial linkages. Second, it decreases the GHG emission from the whole economy associated with a decrease in the use of gasoline; on the other hand, it should be also noted that the GHG emission caused by the gasohol production is not negligible. Third, the gasohol promotion policy increases employee income in the economy as a whole; more importance is that there is the potential increase in income of the rural households.
