Indirect Import of Electricity

Even if Japan cannot import electricity directly, it can be understood as indirectly importing electricity by reducing domestic production of goods that consume large amounts of electricity and switching to imports. This chapter constructs Effective Import Dependency (EID) as an indicator of indirect dependence on electricity imports and measures the electricity EID from 1960 to 2018 for the Japanese economy based on an input–output analysis framework. The measurements show three major transition periods: a rise after the first oil shock, a fall from the 1980s, and a re-rise from the mid-1990s. In particular, during the recent re-rise period, the economy-wide electricity EID doubled from 10.3% in 1995 to 22.8% in 2018. The Japanese government has attributed the recent decline in domestic electricity demand to the decoupling of economic growth and energy consumption resulting from successful energy conservation policy, and it is increasingly confident about further tightening regulations. However, the measurements in this chapter show that the effect of increased electricity imported indirectly, which has not been directly observed, explains about 30% of the recent slump in domestic electricity demand.