Impacts on Energy Consumption and GHG Emissions due to Food Wastage Reductions as a Result of Utilizing Information Technologies and the Like: An Analysis Based on an Input-Output Table in Japan

Abstract

Food is essential for human life and its stable supply is important. However, it seems that there is room for suppressing the food wastage throughout our food system. This study focused on Japan, and estimated amounts of reductions in the energy consumption and GHGs emissions due to food wastage reductions. Our analysis based on an Input-output table shows that, if 50% of food wastage (F: agriculture for vegetables and fruits, I: food manufacturing industries, distributors, retailers, and eating and drinking industries, and M: household) is suppressed owing to the technologies such as advanced food demand prediction using weather forecast information, then, productions corresponding to the discarded food can be saved in many relating sectors, and the energy consumption and GHG emissions in Japan are reduced by 0.04～0.08EJ/yr and 5.9～8.4million t CO₂eq/yr, respectively. Furthermore, it is suggested that decrease in food wastage at the sector I leads to the GHG emissions reduction in Japan at lower cost compared to the decreases at the sectors F and M, since the latter may have issues on efficient transportations of mail order vegetables (normally non-marketable) or replacements of residual heat at incineration facilities.