Analysis of industrial water–energy–labor nexus zones for economic and resource-based impact assessment

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprints for achieving a sustainable future, and understanding the interlinkages among social, economic, and environmental fields is a key factor in accomplishing them. The goal of this study was to analyze a framework for sustainable economic growth considering the trade-offs among economic inequality, resource security, and labor requirement through an industrial water, energy, and labor (I-WEL) nexus approach. We analyzed the economic intensity of industrial water, energy, and labor in 47 prefectures in Japan; we found that the more industrialized prefectures showed lower water but higher energy intensities than relatively less industrialized prefectures. We then classified four I-WEL nexus zones—high efficiency, labor-intensive, water-intensive, and water- and energy-intensive zones—based on their economic intensities and by using the K-means clustering method. Finally, we applied economic growth scenarios, weighted by I-WEL nexus zones, and quantified water, energy, and labor requirements by scenario at the local, regional, and national scales. The results show that, by using weighted economic growth in the high-efficiency I-WEL nexus zones and relative to the baseline scenario (which assigns equal ratios of increased economic growth to all prefectures), a potential savings of 337 Mm³/year of freshwater and 184 PJ/year of energy can be realized. However, as the more industrially developed prefectures were included in the high-efficiency zone, this scenario increased the Gini coefficient, i.e., the economic inequality among prefectures. In summary, this study shows that the application of the I-WEL nexus can be used as a framework for sustainable economic growth considering the trade-offs between efficiency of resource use and economic inequality. © 2021