Countries within the European Union (EU) have made progress over the past decade toward Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7), which calls for “access to reasonably priced, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” by 2030, in response to a study published February 28, 2024 within the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Marek Walesiak from Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, Poland, and Grażyna Dehnel from Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland.
In 2015, the United Nations developed 17 global Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030. Tenets of SDG 7 include universal access to reasonably priced energy; increased renewable energy in developing countries; and international clean energy research. Seven key metrics, called indicators, are used to quantify countries’ progress toward the broad aim.
Walesiak and Dehnel measured 27 EU countries’ progress toward SDG 7 between 2010 and 2021, using data provided by Eurostat. EU countries assessed included Croatia and excluded the UK. The researchers captured each country’s position relative to the 2030 targets, including progress made and distance still to go. To regulate for differences amongst countries, the researchers adopted a new-to-the-field method called dynamic relative taxonomy.
Data demonstrated that EU countries made progress toward the SDG 7 targets from 2010-2021, each individually and collectively. The researchers found that Sweden got here closest to achieving SDG 7 goals in 2021, followed by Denmark and Estonia; Bulgaria was furthest from the goal. Malta, which in 2010 was furthest from the 2030 targets, made the best progress toward SDG 7. Latvia displayed the biggest leap in rankings, jumping from nineteenth to eighth place.
In 2021, several countries had already achieved 2030 targets for a number of of SDG 7’s key indicators. For instance: Sweden, Finland, and Latvia surpassed the 40% goal for the indicator: “Share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption.” The researchers credit this to hydropower and biofuels.
The researchers state that each one indicators should be closely and constantly monitored to make sure the EU achieves its SDG 7 goals by 2030. Noting the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, they acknowledge that sixteen countries experienced deterioration of their progress from 2020-2021.
The authors add: “The aim of the study is to evaluate progress towards meeting SDG 7 (“Ensure access to reasonably priced, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”) by individual EU countries in 2010-2021, and to find out their distance in relation to the goal set for 2030. With the intention to limit the impact of the compensation effect on the rating of EU countries, we applied dynamic relative taxonomy with the geometric mean to create an aggregate measure that takes under consideration goal values for the indications with adjusted data.”
