In the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, by adopting the EU Renewable Energy Directive and the European Green Deal, the European Union aims at an extremely ambitious goal to become climate neutral by 2050. This goal involves a massive investment plan to support this initiative, but also to reduce disparities between Member States, in order to transform the Union into a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the sustainable development and renewable energy sources relationship in EU countries from a new perspective. Based on Eurostat available data and with the help of hierarchical clustering analysis, the Member States were divided in 2019 into five clusters, highlighting the key characteristics of the selected variables. The results of this research revealed high-performing groups of countries, as well as countries that need increased attention and additional support to become more efficient in achieving their sustainable development goals and renewable energy source targets.

Companies in the energy sector, due to their important role in the economy and the specificity of energy sources, are exposed to many types of risk, ranging from the risk associated with the company’s operations and the global economic and political situation in the world. Energy companies are usually large capital companies whose shares are listed on the stock market. The mentioned risk factors may shape the risk level of these companies. The study aims to examine the relationship between market and accounting risk measures for Polish energy companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. This paper uses market and accounting betas in the conventional and downside approach. In addition to market measures of total risk, it also examines the variability of ROA for energy companies. The study of the relationship between market risk measures and accounting risk measures was based on Pearson’s correlation coefficient, standard linear regression, and quantile regression. The relationship between market and accounting measures of total and systematic risk was identified. Moreover, quantile regressions revealed that the slope for accounting variables varies across the quantiles. Our research shows that for energy companies not listed on the capital markets, for which no market risk measures can be derived, accounting betas and downside accounting can be useful tools in risk analysis. The contribution of the article to the risk analysis of energy companies is the use of unpopular accounting beta factors and a new modification of these coefficients for downside risk.

Aim/purpose-The purpose of the research is to verify the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) in the Polish capital market based on a conventional and downside risk approach. Design/methodology/approach-The author in this study, using individual securities and portfolios, compares the unconditional risk-return relationships with the conditional risk, estimated in up and down market using realised returns in cross-sectional regressions. Except for a beta coefficient, the CAPM is tested with co-skewness as a higher order co-moment and downside betas as a risk measure in a downside approach. Findings-The unconditional regressions give evidence of existing risk premium associated with co-skewness and downside beta, and confirmed the validity of the downside CAPM. The author, based on conditional relations, found that risk-return relations depend on the state of the stock market. The average premium for systematic risk in term of beta coefficient is significantly positive in up market periods and significantly negative in down market periods. The use of conditional models did not explicitly confirm the suitability of co-skewness in asset pricing. Research implications/limitations-The main implications include the fact that the conventional beta coefficient is an appropriate risk measure when we consider using it separately for up and down market. A valuable extension of this research would be a benchmarking analysis to compare results for the Polish capital market against other emerging and developed markets. Originality/value/contribution-The author in this paper proposes an alternative approach to testing risk-return relationships based on the CAPM in comparison to commonly used tests founded upon joint estimations of these relationships in periods of both positive and negative market excess return. The noteworthy contribution of this study is an application of the downside beta coefficient and the co-skewness coefficient in crosssectional regressions.

<p>Theoretical background: The variability of the company’s profitability is the result of the accompanying risk. To compare the profitability of many companies, relative profitability measures, which include profitability ratios, are more convenient. This article analyses market and accounting risk factors of CAPM. Risk was considered in variance and downside framework. Market betas, accounting betas were used in an extended version of the asset pricing model. Additionally, the influence of profitability ratios, such as ROA and ROE on the average rate of return on the capital market are considered.</p><p>Purpose of the article: The main purpose of this study is to test the standard and extended CAPM relations between systematic risk measures and mean returns for single companies quoted on the Polish capital market and equally-weighted portfolios in two approaches: variance and downside risk.</p><p>Research methods: The research based on individual securities and portfolios, compares the one-factor risk-return relationships with two-factor ones estimated using mean returns in cross-sectional regressions. The regressors were expressed in absolute terms and classical and downside beta coefficients. The sample includes companies differing in terms of size and across different industries.</p><p>Main findings: Portfolios with higher classical or downside market betas generate higher mean returns. The negative risk premium for accounting betas for variance and downside risk was identified. It is not in accordance with our earlier study of the Polish construction sector, where a positive and significant risk premium for downside accounting betas was found. The highest explanatory power of rates on returns on the Polish capital market were found for average ROA and ROE. This confirms the results of the previous studies on the Polish capital market for food and construction sectors.</p>

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