The Impact of Expenditure on Research and Development on Selected Energy Factors in the European Union

Abstract

Due to the fact that the European Union is striving to achieve its sustainable development goals, in particular goal No. 7, which is to provide users with low-emission, and cheap access to, energy, this article’s aim is to verify whether there is a relationship between R&D expenditure and key energy variables in the EU countries in 2010–2020. Data on R&D expenditures incurred by the EU Member States in the period 2010–2020 were used for the research and were tested using the Autoregressive Distributed Lags Model (ARDL). The study identified a strong positive relationship between total R&D expenditure and the increase in energy consumption from renewable energy sources, and a smaller impact of total R&D expenditure as well as enterprise R&D expenditure on the increase in fossil energy consumption. Also noted was a weak relationship between R&D expenditure and electricity and gas prices for both household and non-household customers. The obtained results prove that in the context of the level of implementation of SDG No. 7 in the EU countries, R&D expenditure results in greater access to low-emission energy from renewable sources, but the achievement of the aforementioned sustainable development goal in other aspects (reduction in energy consumption from fossil fuels and ensuring lower price energy) is not possible with the current level of R&D expenditure.