Lee JH  Kang HY  Hwang YW  Kwon SG

Vol. 28,  No. 3, pp. 258-266, Sep.  2022
10.7464/ksct.2022.28.3.258

Resource Productivity Sub-indicator Industrial Energy Usage Energy Coefficient Domestic Material Consumption

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Resource productivity (GDP/DMC) is defined as GDP divided by DMC. However, it has shortcomings when estimating the value-added generated from material processing. In this paper, an energy coefficient is applied to GDP to develop a sub-indicator (referred to as GDPe/DMC). Consequently, South Korea, which is a secondary industry-oriented country, created 1,094.60 USD/ton from input materials and was ranked 4th on the OECD list, which is 10 levels higher than the level estimated by GDP/DMC. However, Luxembourg, which is a tertiary industry-oriented country, is ranked 16th on the OECD list, which is 12 levels lower than the level estimated by GDP/DMC. The resource productivity estimated by the sub-indicator (GDPe/DMC) developed in this study indicates that secondary industry-oriented countries are undervalued in the existing main GDP/DMC calculation. On the other hand, tertiary industry-oriented countries are downgraded due to the industrial features of the GDPe/DMC calculation. As a result of this paper, GDPe/DMC could be considered a more reasonable indicator to directly reflect the material input effect compared to the existing main indicator, GDP/DMC. This means that GDPe/DMC-induced resource productivities could be estimated to be slightly higher than the GDP/DMC-induced resource productivities for secondary industry-oriented countries. It is expected that the sub-indicator, GDPe/DMC, proposed in this study could be useful especially for comparing and analyzing the resource productivities between countries that have different industry structures. This study intended to consider a structurally energy/resource-intensive industry in estimating and analyzing national-level resource productivity. Thus, the sub-indicator, GDPe/DMC, may help minimize the distortion of interpreting national resource productivities in various situations, and be utilized as a more efficient tool when used together with GDP/DMC.