Macroeconomic Indicators for Technology Assessment

Abstract

In the current stage of the energy transition, socio-political resistances are becoming increasingly apparent, which have often not been foreseen by Life Cycle (Costing) Assessments, Energy System Optimization Models or similar studies. The comprehensive transformation process can, for example, create new import dependencies or shift jobs towards new sectors, moving away from the fossil sectors, which have so far only been identified on a system level (e.g. Lehr et al., 2012; O’Sullivan et al., 2018; Sievers et al., 2019). These and other macroeconomic effects, which can generate socio-political resistances, are intended to be identified and quantified on a technology level within the scope of this work. A set of four macroeconomic indicators for technology assessment are defined through a stakeholder process and subsequently quantified using state-of-the-art methods in an example case study. The indicators chosen for the macroeconomic technology assessment include employment, required qualifications, competitiveness, and criticality (import supply risk). Methodologically, the approaches rely on extended input-output calculations, the revealed comparative advantage method, and a weighted Herfindahl-Hirschmann approach. The case study for which the indicators are applied in this extended abstract is the comparison between individual electric vehicle (EV) ownership and car sharing with EV and the functional unit is kilometers driven.