Renewable Energy and Socio-economic Development in the European Union

Abstract

The main objectives of the manuscript are the monitoring and measurement of economic and social development, as well as assessment of renewable energy development in EU countries from the perspective of sustainable development. EU STRATEGY 2020 has basic objectives related to energy development, which implies significant changes in overall development. Energy exploitation represents significant factor of economic, environmental and social development in separate countries, as in EU as a whole. The article will present sample methodology for energy strategy assessment, through analysis of basic economic, social and environmental indicators in EU27 countries. This research includes inter alia analysis of energy production in the EU27 countries, energy import dependency, quantity of pollution as result of energy production and consumption, and human development index (HDI). The countries with the greatest values of Total GDP (eg. Germany, France, United Kingdom and Italy) are positioned in the first ten countries in the total emission of CO2, SOx, and NOx. The leading countries in the values of GDP per capita (eg. Luxemburg, Denmark, Sweden and Netherlands) have the middle values of pollution as result of energy production and consumption, except Luxemburg which is at the leading place. The relation between energy export and energy import in EU27 region reflects energy dependency in EU27 region and represents essential energy related problem. The country with the best export-import ratio is Denmark.