• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.275-311
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• 2007

Hydrogen energy is emphasized as a substitutable energy of carbon-based energy system in the future, since it is non-depletable and clean energy. Long term vision of Korean government on the national energy system is to promote hydrogen energy by 15% of final energy demand until 2040. This study analyzes economic impacts of hydrogen energy development employing a dynamic CGE model for Korea. Frontier technology such as hydrogen energy is featured as slow diffusion at the initial stage due to the learning effect and energy complementarity. Without government intervention, hydrogen energy would be produced upto 6.5% of final energy demand until 2040. However, if government subsidizes sales price of hydrogen energy by 10%, 20%, and 30%, share of hydrogen energy would increase 9.2%, 15.2%, and 37.7% of final energy demand. This result shows that the slow diffusion problem of hydrogen energy as frontier technology could be figured out by market incentive policy. On the other hand, production levels of transportation sector would increase while growth rate of oil and electricity sectors would decline. Household consumption would be affected negatively since increase of consumption due to the price decrease would be overwhelmed by income reduction owing to the increase of tax. Overall, GDP would not decrease or increase significantly since total production, investment, and export would increase even if household consumption declines.