Endogenizing long-term material and energy demand in response to power capacity changes by model soft-linking: application to Japan

Japan's decarbonization transition towards carbon neutrality by 2050 will be more dependent on the long-term development of renewables. However, the renewable power generation technologies themselves are highly material- and energy-intensive. We estimated such materials and energy demands in response to power capacity changes. Our main results show that: (1) achieving a 100% reduction of GHG emissions requires enormous and urgent investment during 2020-2030; (2) the largest gap of material demands would show in 2020-2030, especially for cement-related products, petrochemical products, cables, wood products, and steel products, but with different degrees of dispersion; (3) the largest gap of industrial energy demands would show later in 2030-2040 as a result of early investment (inter-period iterations). Increasing material efficiency and benefiting more and earlier from the increasingly low-carbon energy supply would be the key to Japan's industrial decarbonization.