Eco Design of IT society - An analysis of the environmental effects of IT diffusion by using a CGE model

In this research, we estimated the effects of IT diffusion on the total CO2 emissions of the Japanese economy. We based our evaluation on a computable general equilibrium model (CGE model), which is a modeling method generally used in economics to analyze structural economic changes. Based on the framework we calculated the CO2 emissions of Japan for two cases: "the status quo", and "a (hypothetical) advanced IT-oriented economy". Comparing the calculated CO2 emissions enabled us to determine the environmental effects of the diffusion of IT Our results indicate that an advanced IT revolution would potentially reduce CO2 emissions by 36.3 million tons-CO2, which corresponds to 3.1% of the total CO2 emissions of the Japanese economy. We show the details of the evaluations and discuss the key factors which enable 'eco design' of IT society.