• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.158-167
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that encouraged the industrial growth of Koran city gas industry during 1995-2009, by carrying out input-output structural decomposition analysis(IO-SDA) using Syrquin's model. The results show that the main factors which contributed to the growth of the Korean city gas industry are final domestic demand(48.4%) and technological change(38.6%). By examining the results for the three periods of 1995-2000, 2000-2005, and 2005-2009, the tendency of changes between the two main factors is drawn. In contrast to the drastic decreasing tendency of the final domestic demand's contribution to the growth, 84.5%, 18.9%, and 15.4%, respectively for each period, there is an increasing tendency for technological change as seen by the results of 7.4%, 70.0%, and 42.2%, respectively. These findings may be a result from the fact that the rate of gas supply in the residential sector has been saturated recently. They are also reflective of the energy consumption trend of industrial activities as there has been a shift in the approach for supplying energy, from the traditional approach which use fossil fuels to the newer approach which uses environmentally friendly energy sources. For the continued growth of the city gas industry, policymakers sould consider greater investment in the expansion of city gas supply infrastructure for industrial activities rather than for the residential sector.