Business Model for a Low-carbon Economy(<Special Issue>Manufacturing and Environmental Management (II))

抄録

Max Weber predicted in his "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" that this cosmos [of the Protestant work ethic] today determines, with overwhelming coercion, the style of life of all individuals born into it, not only of those directly engaged in earning a living but of every individual who is born into this mechanism, and may well continue to do so until the very last ton of fossil fuel has been consumed (Weber, 1989). As according to Weber's prediction, the world is about to face a serious food and natural resources crisis which may make the global economic system unbalanced. Under the circumstances of such natural resources and global economic related limitation and the necessity for global warming countermeasures, there has been a wider tendency in discussing about the necessity of the newly so-called economic concept "Low-carbon economy". There is a tendency that this concept is achieving a global consensus, as represented by Lester R. Brown's "Plan B4.0". It is therefore necessary to create a methodology to implement a low-carbon economy in concrete terms. This paper focuses on how to set up this methodology. We shall discuss about business realities related to our own experiences and Japan's energy-savings as an application of our business model in a narrow sense, i.e., the concept of profitgenerating structure. As a result, due to the difficulty in implementing a low-carbon economy under the mechanism of a freely competitive market, we shall suggest that the internalization of the external regulations and incentives help to design and complete a business model which then enables the implementation of a low-carbon economy.