The Energy Usage of Food Consumption in Taiwan: An Apply of Structural Decomposition Analysis

Abstract

Energy almost accounts for the entire amount of power in all kinds of activities and plays an intermediate to necessary role in the production process. Previous literature usually emphasizes the descriptive statistics and it is rare to use a mathematical model to explore energy usage, however. This paper uses structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to discuss energy use in the Taiwan food system during the period of 2001-2006. The empirical results indicate that the main effect of energy use in the domestic food consumption system is food-related budget change effects in 2001-2004. And the main effect of energy use is technology change effect in 2004-2006. The results also find the energy mineral is the main effect in domestic and import food consumption; the petroleum refined products is the main effect in the domestic food consumption. The government should restrain some industries with massive energy usage, such like petrochemicals, steel, synthetic fiber, paper, and cement.