Toward a Society with Sustainable Energy Utilization
The global environment problem is one of the most serious concerns in the 21st century. Sustainable (metabolic) society would be an ultimate goal, where our activities impose no burden on future generations. The society, in addition, should be efficient in an economic sense. Studying sustainable society with respect to energy consumption is most important since energy utilization is a key to tackling the problem.
The studies with the aim of establishing sustainable society should consider both sides of technology system and socio-economy system although this challenge is not so easy due to the variety of research fields necessary for the studies.
Multidisciplinary Studies: Technology System and Socio-Economy System
There are two bases in our researches. One is “technology” which underlies energy supply and demand and environmental protection; the other is “economic society” where technologies are employed in various activities.
Our research target is to propose new systems and institutions necessary to realize a society with sustainable energy utilization. Multidisciplinary studies including technology system and socio-economy system have various scales of system boundaries such as a city in a country, Japan, Asia, or the world.
Research Topics
Our research topics are as follows: (1) environmental friendly energy system; (2) deregulation in electric power system; (3) evaluation of life style; (4) measures to reduce greenhouse gas emission, and so forth. These multidisciplinary topics are studied from the viewpoint of system simulation and evaluation, theoretical analysis in economics and their applications to system or framework design.
