Assessment of economic and environmental energy performance of EU countries using CV-TOPSIS technique

Abstract

Abstract Energy production is fundamental to modern lifestyles and living standards, and as the quality of life grows, so does the demand for energy. But at the same time, an increased demand for energy has many negative effects, such as climate change and global temperature rise caused by increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. In addition, high levels of energy use results in greater depletion of fossil fuels, oil, or natural gas. To avoid these problems, many countries are closely monitoring their energy intensity and implementing the politics and tools for its improvement. This paper aims to perform a quantitative evaluation of the energy economic and environmental performance of the EU countries using the TOPSIS techniques as one of the MCDM methods to find the most desirable alternative(s) from a set of available alternatives versus the selected criteria. Based on seven indicators weighted by the Coefficient of Variance, we have comprehensively evaluated the energy economic and environmental performance of the EU countries. Among other things, we noted the strong dominance of Sweden throughout the period under review and have recorded significant improvement progress in the overall assessment of Luxembourg. One of our conclusions is that it is not possible to combine the absolute change in the CV-TOPSIS result with a change in the overall placement, which, in addition to its own progress, reflects the progress of the whole group of subjects under analysis.