英文摘要 |
Wackernagel and Rees proposed the ecological footprint, the area of land and water required for resource provision and environment assimilation in order to support the final consumption of a defined human population, as an index of sustainability in 1996. The purpose of footprint calculations is to provide an evaluation regarding the dependence of humanity on the ecosystem and then to justify whether the human population survives within the carrying capacity of the earth. So far, the major component of ecological footprints in most case studies is the energy footprint, which represents the area required for assimilating C02 from burning fossil fuels, for buffering the radiation from nuclear power, and for building dams to generate hydrological electricity. The dominant role of energy footprints has been criticized as not able to reflect the possibility that an significant reduction in energy footprints can be achieved by changing energy structure or decreasing final energy consumption. The original calculation method of energy footprints fails to conducting policy simulation because the calculation is based on the statistics of the primary energy consumption and thus lacks of the relationship linkages between final consumption of goods and services, energy final consumption, and the primary energy use. However, it is these linkages that provide the possibilities for policy simulation. This paper proposes a calculation framework that comprehends the concerned linkages for energy footprint assimilation and then applies the calculation to Taiwan. In the proposed framework, this paper suggests to combine two policy simulation models: a computable general equilibrium model and primary energy transformation matrix. The first one simulates the change of domestic final demand resulting from imposing a new tax; and the second one takes into account the relationship between final energy consumption and primary energy demands of different types that have influences on the size of energy footprint. |