Abstract
In order to investigate how low-carbon products, such as photovoltaic (PV) panels will reduce regional CO2 emissions over a longer period of time (e.g., 30 years), we describe scenarios to analyze the relationship among various social changes in the future (e.g., energy policy), the amount of low-carbon products diffused in a region, and the resulting CO2 emissions throughout the life cycle of the products. In this paper, we develop an integrated model for estimating the diffusion of low-carbon products and the CO2 emissions due to the diffusion of low-carbon products using life cycle simulation. In a case study, we described several PV diffusion scenarios toward 2045 for the Tokyo area, in which we evaluated PV installation capacity and the CO2 emissions caused by PV diffusion. The results showed that the ownership rate of PV in 2045 would account for 36.8-53.6 %. In addition, it was revealed that the extension of product lifetime provides the potential opportunity to reuse secondhand PV, causing less CO2 emissions than other scenarios.
