Abstract
A number of studies have been made to develop indicators which can assess the sustainability of human activities. For example, the embodied energy or the total energy directly and indirectly consumed for the production of goods and services has been used as a proxy variable that can represent the overall environmental impact of economic activities, as energy use is related to the emission of air pollutants and carbon dioxide that causes the climatic change. On the other hand, ecological footprint (EF) or the land area required to produce the resources and assimilate the wastes is another indicator that focuses on the reproductivity of natural capital stocks. This paper presents an estimate of the ecological footprint of Japan based on the input-output model. Then it compares the environmental loads caused by different industry sectors, using embodied energy and EF as indicators. Finally, it presents an indicator that integrates the embodied energy and the ecological footprint.
