Sources of Structural Change in Energy Demand and the Effect of Energy Conservation Policy in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Su-Pin Liu, 劉蘇萍
• Other Authors: Shih-Mo Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/40079309519920749279

碩士 === 中原大學 === 國際貿易研究所 === 90 === This thesis aims to examine the effectiveness of energy conservation policies in Taiwan. We explore this issue by looking at the three dimensions of energy demand: structural changes in energy demand, the key elements of change in energy use for the past twenty years, and the interactions between energy demand and other related variables. The theoretical derivation of this study is partly based on Pigou’s proposition of imposing taxes on firms that pollute the environment. The model of Espey (1997) is also used to examine the effect of air pollution prevention fee on gasoline conservation and tailpipe emissions in Taiwan. Our analytical results show that imposing the fees should reduce both gasoline consumption and air pollution. For empirical estimation, we use event study methods together with some other approaches for finding points of structural change, such as Chow test, CUSUM test, CUSUM of square test, and the method for outlier detection, to examine whether energy- and environment-related policies have resulted in a significant change in the use of major energy products. In addition, we use the decomposition method to decompose the variations of energy use for the past twenty years, and attribute them into three different components: energy intensity, sectoral change, and production activity. We also use VECM to explore the interactions between energy demand and other related variables Our results reveal that liberalizing the gasoline market will have significant effect on gasoline consumption. However, the results from VEC model show that the price elasticities for most energy products are low in absolute terms, which implies that only significant changes in prices will have major effects on energy consumption. The results from the decomposition analysis reveal that conservation policies have been quite effective for some energy products, such as diesel oil, fuel oil, and LPG. However, the policies have been not very effective for vehicle gasoline due to the fast growth in the transportation sector. This means that if we want to more effectively conserve the energy, government should put more effort on designing policies for refraining gasoline use in the transportation sector.