Renewable energy (RE) creates opportunities for sustainable, socioeconomic development of local communities as fossil fuel-based energy imports are substituted with local RE sources. Established methods such as input–output (I/O) analysis face limitations when assessing these regional effects due to insufficient model integration of RE sectors. For Germany, regional value-added modeling at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) based on RE value chain analysis is recognized as a viable alternative approach. The international transferability of this model is tested for the case of Japan.