2017 Volume 96 Issue 6 Pages 176-185
This study discuses a versatile method to estimate the socio-economic impacts by region (i.e. prefecture, nation, and the world) of introducing energy technologies using Input-Output (IO) tables. The study builds two types of models from national and prefectural IO tables: a difference IO (DIO) model, and a two-region IO (TRIO) model. Both models reflect the industrial structures in two regions and can analyze the socio-economic impacts in the three regions. These models are tested in a case study on Japan’s Yamanashi prefecture, where they estimate the economic impacts of a renewable energy power generation across the life cycle. The case study results show no significant differences of the impacts in the prefecture at the construction, operation and maintenance stages between the two models. However, at the manufacturing stage, the TRIO model shows a slightly higher impact than the DIO model. This is because the TRIO model reflects the rebound effect unlike the DIO model, and the rebound effect is greater in the manufacturing sectors than in the other sectors. While the DIO model have a slightly lower accuracy due to not considering the rebound effect, it is better than the TRIO model in that it can easily estimate the impacts.
