A study on the evaluation of environmental impacts caused by technology developments

Technology development for reduction of energy and material consumption should be welcomed and promoted, however, the development may require additional consumption of energy and material by the sector which has an indirect relationship with the technology. Moreover, the additional consumption causes environmental impacts. In this study, we propose a method to evaluate direct and indirect environmental impacts which are effected by the technology development by using the input and output table. The technology development is described as change of input coefficient of the IO table, and changes in emission of CO/sub 2/, NOx, SOx and SPM and the quantity of final disposal are calculated as the spillover effect. Under a scenario where the automobile sector replaced the steel materials used in car bodies or parts with light nonferrous metal and carbon fiber materials, environmental impacts are estimated. As a result, it is found that the technology development in the scenario makes CO/sub 2/ emission decrease but emission of other air pollutants and the quantity of final disposal increase.