Project Proposal: Is Renewable Energy A Luxury?

In this project, I will focus on the relationship between the growth of renewable energy consumption and major macroeconomic/demographic indicators.

My main data source will be Eurostat. I plan to use the following annual series.

• Share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption (t2020_31)
• Main GDP aggregates per capita (nama_10_pc)

Looking at the scatterplot, Sweden, Ireland and Luxembourg seem to be outliers. There seems to be no significant relationship between these two variables for 2019 data.

When we use 10-year change instead of the 2019 figures for renewable energy consumption ratio, the relationship seems promising. However, hypothesis testing is needed for such a statement.

In addition to conducting hypothesis tests, new macroeconomic and/or demographic variables could be added in the following phases. In this respect, Andreas et al.’s (2017) study could be used.

References
Andreas, Jan-Justus, Charlotte Burns, and Julia Touza. “Renewable energy as a luxury? A qualitative comparative analysis of the role of the economy in the EU’s renewable energy transitions during the ‘double crisis’.” Ecological Economics 142 (2017): 81–90.

EUROSTAT: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/main/data/database