Comparative analysis of hydro energy determinants for European Economies using Golden Cut-oriented Quantum Spherical fuzzy modelling and causality analysis

Abstract

This article presents a comparative analysis of the determinants of hydropower for European economies using Golden Cut oriented Quantum Spherical fuzzy modelling and causality analysis in 24 European countries over the period 2001–2020. The indicators chosen for the analysis are inflation, population, GDP per capita, CO2 and hydropower consumption. The analysis shows that the selected groups of countries are characterised by an inverse relationship between GDP per capita and hydropower consumption, suggesting a bi-directional causal relationship, which also confirms the novelty of this paper. Furthermore, another analysis is carried out using the fuzzy decision-making methodology. In this framework, the directions of influence of the five selected indicators are constructed: GDP per capita (criterion 1, D = 88.656, E = 88.083), hydropower consumption (criterion 2, D = 89.471, E = 88.677), population (criterion 3, D = 87.705, E = 89.228), CO2 emissions (criterion 4, D = 88.578, E = 89.186) and inflation (criterion 5, D = 88.943, E = 88.180). The Quantum Spherical fuzzy methodology is used for this purpose. The values of D and E are measures of the sum of the rows and columns of the overall relationship matrix. Hydropower consumption is the main criterion. It is understood that two different analyses give similar results, namely the bidirectional causal relationship between criteria 1 and 2.