Abstract

Major economies are competing to dominate the emerging energy economy, and governments, regardless of their position on the plan-market spectrum, are key in driving technology development and adoption. There is great interest in comparing energy rich regions within two distinctly different economic systems, the US and China, as they develop and move toward adopting new energy technologies and responding to changing environmental realities and globalization processes. The technology-energy-environment-economy (TEEE or TChain) interplay has profound implications for the world economy and presents very distinct analytical challenges both to social scientists and policy makers. This article introduces an integrated engineering and economic modeling framework to quantify and assess the interactions between technology, energy, the environment, and the economy (TEEE), particularly in energy rich regions (ERRs). This framework integrates three disparate models: a structural decomposition analysis (SDA), an input output process-flow model (IOPM), and a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model into a unified system. This integrated modeling framework facilitates analyzing TChain elements and simulating development scenarios in ERRs. The emerging clean energy economy greatly impacts the environment and the role of government in transitioning major economies to a sustainable development path. The TEEE framework would enhance a knowledge base upon which fully informed policy planning and decision-support systems can be based.