Assessment of impacts on CO2 emissions and GDP of ICT services in Japan using computable general equilibrium model

ICT (information and communication technology) has a potential to reduce the energy demands mainly related to the transportation. On the other hand, convenience of the ICT may increase the service demand, and the saved time and cost may affect the negative impacts to the energy demand. In order to assess both positive and negative impacts of ICT diffusion on the CO2 emissions and GDP in Japan, the 20 ICT services such as teleworking and digital book are selected, and their direct impacts are introduced in the static CGE (computable general equilibrium) model. Through the comparison between the situations with and without ICT, we assess the impacts on the economic activities, energy demands, and CO2 emissions of the introduction of ICT services taking into account both direct and indirect effects. The tentative results show that the most significant ICT service to reduce the CO2 emissions is teleworking, and the distribution management of products can increase the GDP the most among the 20 ICT services.