Feasibility study of European Green Deal based on GHG emission reduction targets set in the effort sharing regulation

Celem niniejszego badania jest porównanie grup krajów o wyższym, średnim lub niższym potencjale do dekarbonizacji, przewidzianym w metodologii ESR zaproponowanej przez Unię Europejską (bazującej na wskaźnikach PKB) z grupą krajów, która zostanie uzyskana w wyniku zastosowania metody k-means, (wykorzystującej wskaźniki PKB, w połączeniu ze wskaźnikami środowiskowymi rekomendowanymi przez EUROSTAR).

The European Green Deal was presented by the European commission in 2019, aiming to develop a sustainable economy across the 27 Member states. One of the main goals was to achieve Carbon Neutrality by 2050 and 55% of reductions in GHG emissions by 2030, using the Effort sharing regulation (ESR) as one of the main mechanisms for setting National targets throughout all European members, covering sectors such as agriculture, waste, transport, buildings, and small industry, which altogether account for the 60% of the total GHG emissions in the European Union. This study is focus on analysing the national targets assigned in the ESR (Effort Sharing Regulation), since those targets are one of the main mechanisms to be used in order to achieve long and middle term goals for the European Green Deal. Therefore, it is important to understand whether the target setting process is considering the full potential that each country has to decarbonise when setting up targets. There are several factors apart from economic aspects that can influence the decarbonisation potential of a given country and yet the target setting process from the ESR only focus on economic aspects such as GDP per capita. Understanding what can allow the decarbonisation process to happen in a country can be a complex task; from setting proper strategies, implementing them while scaling up new technologies and induce behavioural changes, there are several drivers or so-called levers that foster the transition process towards low carbon economies. As a consequence, it is a challenging task to find out which set of indicators can reveal the true potential each country has to decarbonise, for instance, identifying patterns of change among Member States in the European Union has been considered a complex task, as each European country is working towards their own priorities (IEEP, 2021) As it was pointed out, the ESR set targets were based lonely in the gross domestic product per capita, to offer a fast solution to a complex problem and start driving reductions of GHG emissions in the European Union, in the attempt to set fair targets to each member state. Moreover, considering that during several years the GDP has been the most well-known indicator to express the level of development of a country (Rogers et al., 2008), it is not surprising that in an attempt to allow a just transition an economic indicator has been ranked as the most important aspect to be taken into account when setting targets. Countries in the European Union with higher GDP per capita were assigned to more strict reduction targets while others with lower GDP were assigned to less strict reduction targets. During 2021 the targets for the Effort Sharing Regulation were reviewed and the first step was taken to acknowledge the complexity of each member state, however, the new proposed targets were once again based on economic mechanisms such as flexibilities to access to credits and allowances. This study looks for exploring to what extend K-method can contribute to the discussion of how to share responsibilities among similar and different countries when it comes to set targets. In order to do that, this study is integrating clustering methodologies such as k-means in the sustainability field, in which large amount of data is available and need to be understood. The goal of this study is to compare the groups of countries with higher, medium, or lower potential to decarbonise provided in the ESR with the group of countries which will be obtained from running the k-means method. which will use GDP per capital together with several environmental indicators available from EUROSTAR.