Analysing the Energy Efficiency of EU Member States: The Potential of Energy Recovery from Waste in the Circular Economy

Abstract

This paper examines energy efficiency across 28 selected European Union (EU) Member States and reviews the potential for energy recovery from waste according to the efficiency scores obtained. The efficiencies are assessed through data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the following variables are used, inputs: final energy consumption, labour, capital, population density and outputs: gross domestic product (GDP), nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, sulphur oxide (SOx) emissions and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the years 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. Results show that most countries maintain their efficiency scores with only a few marginally improving theirs and at the same time, it is noticed that most are decreasing after 2012. Based on these efficiency scores, this paper recommends moving towards waste-to-energy with two main objectives, namely sufficient and sustainable energy production and effective treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW). This option would enhance the circular economy, whereas prioritization needs to be given to prevention, preparation for reuse, recycling and energy recovery through to disposal. Together with the EU Commission’s competition strategy, these options would ensure reliable energy supplies at rational prices and with the least environmental impacts. Moreover the efficiency scores need to be examined along the financial crisis which has been affecting the EU since 2008, showing a decrease in those efficiency scores after 2012 under a more imminent crisis.

The Circular Model in Disposal with Municipal Waste. A Case Study of Slovakia

“…In the EU waste management hierarchy, waste management is ranked as follows: waste prevention, preparation for re-use, recycling, and recovery, with landfilling being the last resort. The need to efficiently treat the waste is in some countries, including Slovakia, enormous [19]. However, the CE concept is also adopted by developing countries [5,20,21].…”

Circular Economy and Economic Development in the European Union: A Review and Bibliometric Analysis

“…The bibliometric effort identified that several issues related to the circular economy have attracted the attention amongst researchers [76,82,103,122]. This identification has shown the relevance of studies performed in these fields and the enormous potential to be explored in future work.…”

“…Circular economy approaches may promote positive externalities [120] and economic growth [121]. The reverse is also true, where the economic and financial stabilities may create conditions for a more sustainable development [122]. These positive impacts are, for example, particularly relevant in agriculture, where the reuse of agro-waste [123] or waste from other sectors and activities [124] may improve the narrow margins of profit of the sector and bring alternatives for waste management [125].…”

Quantifying Electricity Supply Resilience of Countries with Robust Efficiency Analysis

“…Regarding energy efficiency improvements, Wang et al (2019) compared the CO 2 emissions in relation to GDP growth from 25 countries and found that India and China are the two worst countries in terms of energy efficiency [54]. A similar study focusing on energy recovery from waste for European Union (EU) member states was produced by Halkos and Petrou (2019) [47]. Furthermore, Robaina-Alves et al (2015) derived the efficiencies of European countries based on the maximization of the ratio between the GDP (desired output) and GHG emissions (undesired output) [52].…”

“…Out of the 25 studies analyzed (including the present one), 15 of them (60%) use the same set of inputs: labor force, capital stock and energy consumption [34,39,40,42,44,[47][48][49][50][52][53][54]56,57,59]. Furthermore, out of these 15 studies, four consider only the GDP as an output [44,49,53,56], while the rest consider the GDP as a desirable output and GHG emissions as an undesirable output [34,39,40,42,47,48,50,52,54,57,59]. Within DEA country comparisons, efficiency is, therefore, usually measured as a minimization of the labor force, capital stock, and energy consumption (inputs) in order to maximize the GDP (desirable output) and minimize the GHG emissions (undesirable output).…”