ASSESSING THE IMPACTS OF WILLINGNESS TO PAY ON DIFFUSION OF RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES IN JAPAN

摘要

In order to reach goals in the Paris Agreement,numerous previous studies have suggested several pathways to promote the decarbonization of power sector(Howard et al.,2018;Sharifzadeh et al.,2017).Among these studies,one of key actions is diffusion of renewable resources such as solar and wind.For example,Howard et al.(2018)described a quantitative study with policy roadmaps to achieve 1.5 or 2.0 degree budget in Australian by 2050,suggesting renewable energy have substantial effect on the reducing CO2 emmision,in some case by more than 90%.Many studies also have pointed out that renewable energy resources need to overcome its higher generation cost than facilities and system those used conventional fossil-fuel resource.Several recent studies have revealed the consumer would like to pay the additional cost of electricity(also known as Willingness To Pay,WTP)generated by renewable egergy due to the increasing public concern for global environmental problems,especially climate change(Murakami et al.,2015;Nomura,2009).Such comsumer’s WTP may lead to remove cost barriers,however,most of these studies mainly focused on the survey of specific WTP value from the different regions.To our best knowledge,there is still no research about the impact of WTP on renewable energy diffusion,which can assist the policy makers to determine the subsidy policy for future sustainable energy development.As such,our study aim to assess the impacts of the citizens'willingness to pay on diffusion of renewable energy resources in Japan.