The driving forces of change in energy-related CO2 emissions in Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern Europe: The LMDI approach to decomposition analysis

The objective of this work is to identify the relevant factors that have influenced the changes in the level of CO2 emissions among four groups (eastern, western, northern and southern) of European countries. Our results show that CO2 emissions are correlated with the energy consumption of the economy for the group of countries under analysis, which is determined by the change of population among the various countries. Similarly, renewable energy consumption is also determined by the size and structure of the countries, as reflected by the value added to the economy. When comparing the results of the post-Kyoto period to the previous period for the four groups of European countries, one concludes that there are clear improvements in the reductions of emissions. This resulted primarily from changes to the energy mix, switching to cleaner fuels for end-user energy production (a volte-face in the behaviour of the energy mix effect), while the changes in the factors driving emissions resulted from a reduction in the usage of fossil fuels for producing energy. In general, the relative contributions of these two factors show the importance of the impact of changing the structure of the mix for producing energy, with a view to complying with the targets for reductions in CO2 emissions, reflecting the value placed on the significant impact assigned to emissions levels.