The objective of this study is to develop a database for the evaluation of environmental impacts in Thailand. We estimate sectoral CO₂ intensities based on input-output analysis with energy balance table in Thailand. The results show that the electricity sector is the largest source of CO₂ emissions whereas the cement sector has the highest CO₂ intensity. As a case study, we perform an analysis of CO₂ emission structure of agricultural sectors by using the developed database. This analysis finds that the indirect CO₂ emissions from the agricultural services sector and the overseas production of import goods, particularly chemical fertilizers, are significant on the production of agricultural goods in Thailand. The developed database can be applied for various analyses such as the assessment of macro-level environmental impacts as well as the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of products, services, technologies and systems.

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The upper limit of energy demand in China is estimated in consideration of regional differences of their future energy demands. The structure of energy consumption is different among provinces in China and the difference depends on the economic and industrial structures. The differences are investigated in comparison with the existing two typical developed countries, Japan and USA as future directions of different consumption pattern. This study indicates wide range of differences because of the different development status. It shows variety of energy consumption scenarios. One of the scenarios is that rapid growth of energy demand will not occur under such situation of widening regional economic disparity. In another scenario, the huge additional increment of energy demand will occur if the regional disparity and living standards are improved especially in the low-energy consuming region. In this study, the upper limit of demand is expected to come during the latter half of this century.

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Energy consumption continues to grow continuously in spite of the use of many energy conservation devices. Tremendous heat energy below 473 K is discharged into the atmosphere as waste heat. Development of the systems by use of low-grade heat source leads to establishment of highly efficient energy utilization systems. We have proposed an advanced power generation cycle with adsorption process for the use of low-grade heat source. This cycle has two adsorbers consisting of adsorbent and heat exchanger. The adsorber behaves like the condenser. It is expected that the turbine output increases greatly by the increase of a ratio of the pressure at the turbine inlet to that at the turbine outlet. In this work, we have studied the effects of the increase of pressure ratio that was obtained by adopting the adsorber on the turbine output. Suitable working fluid was selected by the thermal properties. Thermal efficiencies of the proposal cycle were investigated.

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Methane hydrate is one of attractive energy resources as promising domestic fossil fuel in Japan, even though its gas-production cost is larger than the current oil price. This study evaluates the merit of methane hydrate development, considering risk of crude-oil supply short such as “Oil Shock” and military events in oil-producing countries. For this purpose, a Monte Carlo simulation and an LCA analysis using input-output tables were conducted to estimate the risk of oil import in the both aspects pf price increase and supply decrease. The resultant risks were compared with the cost of methane hydrate development and the benefit of CO₂ emission trade and suggested that methane hydrate is worth to develop.

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Various evaluations have performed on oil peak forecasting, by confirming oil reserves data, forecast methods, opinions on reserve growth including non-conventional oil, and new oil field discoveries. However, a holistic overview of the oil peak forecast using statistical analysis, including the regression analysis method, would perhaps provide a new perspective from which to evaluate and confirm trends in the oil peak forecast. Therefore, this paper aims to clarify the principle factor contributing to oil peak forecasts by evaluating oil peak forecast studies from this new perspective.
Oil peak year forecasts which predict that innovations in substitute fuels and the oil market force will be the primary contributing factors appear to have risen linearly, while those which indicate that the decline of world conventional oil production is the principle factor appear to be converging on the year 2010. The result of this paper evidently confirms that differing opinions regarding the basic cause of the oil peak have an impact on the oil peak forecasts as they appear in the trends for oil peak forecast studies.

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The purpose of this study is to evaluate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction potentials in world regions and to estimate marginal abatement costs (MAC) through 2020. This study covers 21 geographical world regions and estimate MAC by using detailed technology selection database. In the result, reduction potentials are estimated as 2.5~3.6 GtCO₂ eq and 6.4~7.7 GtCO₂ eq in Annex I and Non-Annex I respectively, under the case of 100 US$/t-CO₂ marginal abatement cost in 2020. China, the United States, India, Western Europe and Russia are five major regions where there are large reduction potentials, and it accounts for around 60 % of total reduction potentials in the world. As for the sector breakdown, large reduction potentials in power generation and industry sectors are evaluated due to the use of low energy-efficient technologies particularly in Non-Annex I in the current situation, and these sectors account for around 50 % of world total reduction potentials. But major sectors which have large reduction potentials vary differently depending on the socio-economic characteristics in each region. There are much larger potentials of cost-effective measures in developing countries, thus international cooperation plays an important role to achieve these GHG emission reductions.

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