A new study into EU countries’ efforts at ensuring widespread access to affordable and sustainable energy observes that the greatest progress between 2010 and 2021 has been achieved by Malta.
Still, Malta is among the member states that remain the furthest away from targets the world set for 2030.
The research, by Marek Walesiak and Grażyna Dehnel, was funded by the minister of education and science of Poland between 2019 and 2023 and is currently being funded by the Poznań University of Economics and Business and the Wroclaw University of Economics and Business.
Titled ‘Progress on SDG 7 achieved by EU countries in relation to the target year 2030’, the findings have just been published in PLOS One, a peer-reviewed journal by the Public Library of Science.
In 2015, 193 UN members adopted the resolution “transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development”, which set out 17 sustainable development goals to be achieved by 2030.
The aim of the study is to assess progress by EU countries towards meeting one of these goals – SDG 7 – which “ensures access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” in the 2010 to 2021 period, and to determine their distance in relation to the target set for 2030.
While Eurostat monitors and assesses progress towards SDG 7 using seven indicators, the researchers used these indicators to create an aggregate index, revealing systematic progress towards reaching the goals, with differences between individual EU countries clearly decreasing.
They concluded that while the smallest distance in relation to the target can be observed for Sweden, Denmark, Estonia and Austria, by far the greatest progress between 2010 and 2021 was achieved by Malta, and was significant for Cyprus, Latvia, Belgium, Ireland and Poland.
Malta is also mentioned – together with Spain and Portugal – as having achieved the 2030 target for an indicator that measures the final energy consumption in households per capita.
The researchers note that in 2010, Malta, Cyprus and Bulgaria were the furthest away from the target, while Denmark, Sweden and Finland were the closest. After 11 years, the group of countries that came closest to the 2030 target – apart from the three Scandinavian countries – includes Estonia, Austria and Slovenia.
Despite progress, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus remained the furthest away from the SDG 7 target in 2021.