Assessment of Sustainable Energy Development in European Union—Correspondence Analysis

The energy transition has now been recognised by European Union (EU) member states as a necessary condition for their long-term development. The process of energy transformation is predicated on the simultaneous implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, which present a considerable challenge for modern economies and impose significant restrictions on their functioning. The objective of this article is to evaluate the transformation of EU member states in the field of sustainable energy development and to categorise them based on their alignment with Sustainable Development Goal No. 7 of the United Nations Agenda 2030, concerning affordable and clean energy, in 2015 and 2023. The monitoring of the progress of the energy transition, as well as the examination of its temporal trends and spatial characteristics, can provide a fundamental analysis framework for the strategic development of energy policy in the EU at national and regional levels. An important approach for this endeavour is the indicator-based assessment of trends. The correspondence analysis proposed in this study and the hierarchical classification, which was intended to help link categories in a two-dimensional space, have the potential to facilitate a more comprehensive assessment of the degree to which EU member states are developing sustainable energy. The study results confirmed significant heterogeneity among the EU-27 countries in terms of energy sustainability. In both 2015 and 2023, the groups of EU countries that achieved a certain level of energy sustainability were identified. However, it should be noted that the composition of each group changed in 2023 compared to 2015. Moreover, no group of EU countries was without its own particular strengths and weaknesses. The results provide opportunities for their interpretation, both in terms of analysing changes in individual indicators and in terms of the global assessment of sustainable development in individual countries. The adoption of an original research approach, divergent from previous studies, for the new timeframe contributes to the resolution of the research gap in empirical studies concerning the classification of EU member states in terms of SDG7 implementation.