Abstract
The European Union, by adopting the European Green Deal, aims at an extremely ambitious goal to become climate neutral by 2050. This objective implies a massive investment plan to reduce disparities between EU Member States and to support their transformation efforts in order to reshape the Union into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy. The objective of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of implementation of SDG 7 targets in EU Member States 5 years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Using hierarchical clustering analysis to reveal hidden associative structures, EU countries were grouped in 2015 and 2019 based on Eurostat data in order to identify and analyze key characteristics, but also to evaluate their evolution over time. The results of this research revealed clusters of high-performing countries, as well as countries that require increased attention and support to ease the transition to a greener economy. If in 2015 the cluster of the best performing countries consisted of four EU countries, in 2019, their number increased to eight EU countries, simultaneously with an improvement of the indicators, proving a real concern and involvement regarding the achievement of SDG 7 targets.
Highlights
Highlighting the sustainable performance of society and the economy in the context of the challenges posed by the 2030 Agenda, the level achieved by each country in terms of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a permanent concern of decision-makers and beyond.In this sense, we identify the presence of numerous information, statistical analyses and specific indicators that are absolutely necessary for measuring the evolution of eachSDG, but which often cannot fully highlight the new challenges or challenges, different from one period to another, from one region to another, an aspect which, complicates decision-making and action processes, especially in countries with lower performance and for which it is necessary to act differently [1,2]
Given that 5 years have passed since the adoption of the Paris Agreement and the discussions on the implementation of the European Green Deal occupy an important part of the European agenda, our research aims to assess the dynamics of SDG 7 target implementation in EU countries
0.000 methodology for 2015 and Starting from the fact that each region/country is constantly monitored in terms of how SDG 7 is reflected in the total sustainable performance, we emphasize that this process is achievable mainly through the following specific indicators: “Primary energy consumption”, “Final energy consumption”, “Energy productivity”, “Share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption by sector”, “Energy import dependence by products”, “Greenhouse gas emissions intensity of energy consumption”, which indices that our research is based
Summary
Highlighting the sustainable performance of society and the economy in the context of the challenges posed by the 2030 Agenda, the level achieved by each country in terms of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a permanent concern of decision-makers and beyond.In this sense, we identify the presence of numerous information, statistical analyses and specific indicators that are absolutely necessary for measuring the evolution of eachSDG, but which often cannot fully highlight the new challenges or challenges, different from one period to another, from one region to another, an aspect which, complicates decision-making and action processes, especially in countries with lower performance and for which it is necessary to act differently [1,2]. Highlighting the sustainable performance of society and the economy in the context of the challenges posed by the 2030 Agenda, the level achieved by each country in terms of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a permanent concern of decision-makers and beyond In this sense, we identify the presence of numerous information, statistical analyses and specific indicators that are absolutely necessary for measuring the evolution of each. This is the main reason why scholarly research reflects the need to permanently identify syncopes and challenges for each SDG, at the level of each country and region, and the analysis of the correlations between them is an absolutely mandatory aspect for Agenda 2030 to be a success for all countries and regions of the world [2,3]. We emphasize that it is imperative to identify the trend that each SDG has at the local and/or regional and global level, as well as the impact that their evolution has on society, the environment and the economy
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