Energy and water footprints comparison of East Asia: A heterogeneity analysis

Abstract

Population and economic growth have posed serious challenges to meet global energy and water needs. With the formation of global value chains and regional economic models changing the location and scale of environmental pressures, East Asia deserves special attention because of its importance in world trade. This paper constructed a global multi-regional input-output table based on the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) 10 database and innovatively matched the energy and water databases to analyze the issues in 2014. The results show that in East Asia, (1) China is a net exporter and presents unique embodied energy characteristics with a trade deficit of 392Mtoe. Moreover, trade is the main reason for embodied energy and water in countries other than China. (2) The electricity sector, petroleum and coal products sector, and the services sector are the main sectors of embodied energy use, in which the latter accounts for 25.9% - 43.9% of the total embodied energy use in major countries. (3) Paddy rice sector and processed foods sector produce lots of embodied water for production and consumption, respectively. And the embodied water of processed foods accounts for more than 40% of major countries consumption.