Development of environmentally extended social accounting matrices for policy analysis in Alberta

ABSTRACT

This paper outlines the development of inputs to an integrated land use and transportation model based on a series of environmentally extended social accounting matrices (SAMs) for the Canadian province of Alberta. A novel form of industry disaggregation is employed, based on aggregate iterative proportion and a unique formulation of location quotients. Social accounts are extended via the inclusion of detailed household consumption broken down by income quintiles. The SAMs are developed from supply-use matrices. Physical flow accounts are framed as derived demands, acting as necessary inputs to the production of downstream goods and services. Applications to regional economic modeling are considered, as planning authorities increasingly seek to model the environmental impacts of policy. The SAMs are then applied to the assessment of two technology change scenarios: a shift in the provincial electricity generation mix and a transition to a fully electric private automobile fleet.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmentally extended input–output analysis
• disaggregation
• environmental factors
• policy analysis
• regional modeling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an NSERC CGS Scholarship and a Queen Elizabeth II Scholarship.