For many decades, the Region of Western Macedonia has been Greece’s energy hub, contributing significantly to electricity supply and national growth with the exploitation of lignite deposits for power generation. Lignite, though, has been banned from EU energy source policies towards achieving CO₂ emissions reduction, with profound implications on the economy of the region. Despite the importance of this energy transition, a combinatorial analysis for the area in the coal phase-out regime is missing. Therefore, a combined analysis is performed here, and more specifically, a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis in all the affected sectors, in combination with the examination of the degree of satisfaction with the EU’s energy priorities. The results of the study show that the Region of Western Macedonia has profound strengths and offers many new opportunities during its transition to a new production model. On the other hand, it has high unemployment rates and low rates of competitiveness and innovation. The main threat is the Region’s desertification due to the inability to find sufficient jobs. Considering the Energy Union’s priorities, the Region of Western Macedonia satisfactorily follows the priorities of Europe in its transition to the new production model, with plenty of room for improvement. The analysis performed allows for a just transition strategic planning to minimize social, economic and energy challenges while maximizing sustainable power generation and has implications for all relevant stakeholders, contributing to the implementation of Energy Union governance and climate actions.

The present study explores the process of Greece’s current decarbonisation transition and its energy policy regarding the country’s two coal-mining areas. Using the Region of Western Macedonia as a case study, we aimed at providing a holistic approach—as until now only few attempts have been made to systematise the ‘Just Transition Plans’ in European Union (EU)—for raising awareness on issues related to water resource management in post-lignite areas and analysing the use of hydropower in Greece. Our research draws on a flexible method approach, serving as a tool to identify gaps in current knowledge and practices, based on two stages—first the analysis of existing literature, reviews, and sources from government’s core strategies, as well as policy and decision-making papers, and then formulating research questions by synthesising relevant data. In Greece, both ‘Just Transition Development Plan of Lignite Areas’ and hydropower production practices overlook water resources management. By summarising our findings and identifying gaps that remain in current approaches, this work indicates future directions by suggesting processes necessary for addressing the complex issue of adoption of sustainable water resources management measures in post-lignite eras in accordance with EU’s water policy.

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions represent a core driver of climate change, environmental degradation, and quality of life, closely associated with human-related activities. The European Union (EU) has set ambitious emissions reduction targets and introduced various frameworks to its members, including Greece, to achieve specific objectives that involve establishing robust emissions estimating mechanisms. The present study examines a period of approximately 6 decades (1965–2023) to analyze the impact of key indicators of the CO₂ emissions in Greece. To explore the relationships between CO₂ emissions, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), urbanization, and Renewable Energy Sources (RES), the research employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression as the primary analytical tool. The analysis demonstrates a strong explanatory power (R² = 0.918), highlighting that an increase in real GDP is associated with a substantial rise in CO₂ emissions, indicating a strong positive long-run relationship between economic activity and environmental pressure. Similarly, a 1% increase in urbanization is associated with an additional 1.5–2 million tons of annual emissions; conversely, a 1% growth in the share of RES contributes to a reduction of approximately 4.5 million tons of CO₂. Overall, the findings and methodological approach underscore the critical role of renewable energy adoption and provide a comprehensive framework for assessing and formulating environmental policies and strategies. The main contribution of this paper is its long-run econometric evaluation of CO₂ emissions in Greece. It uses variables related to the economy, society, and the energy transition, yielding results that can inform policymakers’ national decarbonization strategies and broader environmental protection efforts.

The transition from coal to more sustainable energy sources represents a critical shift for economies reliant on coal production. To investigate the intricate processes involved in such a transition, the use of powerful analytical tools is essential. This study assesses the impact of the delignification process on GDP growth over a 20-year horizon (2015–2035) in the Region of Western Macedonia, Greece, using the Vensim PLE Plus 9.0.1 software, a robust tool for system dynamics modeling. By developing a dynamic model that captures the key variables and feedback loops associated with coal transition, this research examines economic, social, and investment variables, emphasizing their causal relationships. The study integrates societal, economic, and educational impacts on production transition, addressing issues such as unemployment, financial support, and investments in human resources and R&D. Additionally, it considers the influence of climate change on GDP. The model highlights population dynamics, economic development, and education as critical factors. Scenarios explore the impact of increased funding on education, research, and financial aid efficiency, providing insights into enhancing GDP in decarbonizing regions. The study reveals that increased investment in education and human capital leads to slight improvements in local GDP, though the effects are not immediate. Enhanced efficiency in government and European spending significantly boosts local GDP by creating strong value chains and local economies of scale. It is found that the increase in financial support to the regions in transition is of the utmost importance and has a multiplicative nature, something that should encourage the European Union to increase its financial support tools. The model’s simulations align closely with historical GDP data, validating its accuracy. The contributions of the present work offer valuable insights to policymakers and stakeholders engaged in the transition processes.

Environmental protection and the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are central priorities within European climate policy. This study analyses and forecasts annual CO₂ emissions in Greece using a univariate time-series framework. Annual data from 1960 to 2024, sourced from Our World in Data, enable the analysis to capture both the historical expansion of emissions and the recent decarbonization phase of the Greek energy system. Using the Box–Jenkins methodology, multiple ARIMA specifications were evaluated based on information criteria and diagnostic tests. To examine the stationarity properties of the series, the Augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) unit root test is applied. The findings indicate that the ARIMA (1,1,1) model most accurately represents the stochastic dynamics of the emissions series. The estimated autoregressive and moving-average coefficients, 0.9404 and −0.7165, respectively, are statistically significant at the 1% level. Residual diagnostics confirm the absence of serial correlation, approximate normality, and no significant heteroskedasticity. Forecast evaluation for the 2020–2024 holdout period demonstrates satisfactory predictive performance, with a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of approximately 6%. Dynamic forecasts for 2025 to 2030 indicate a gradual decline in national CO₂ emissions, reaching an estimated 45.5 million tonnes by 2030. Overall, the study demonstrates that parsimonious ARIMA models offer a transparent and empirically reliable benchmark for national emissions forecasting. These models provide a reproducible tool for monitoring climate policy outcomes and for supporting evidence-based environmental decision-making. This study contributes to the environmental forecasting literature by providing an updated, diagnostically rigorous univariate benchmark model for Greece’s CO₂ emissions that encompasses both the pre- and post-decarbonization phases of the national energy transition.

Coal phase-out regions concentrate the distributional risks of the energy transition, yet the tools used to identify energy-poor households in these territories still rely mainly on income and welfare criteria. This study asks whether such criteria can identify the households that suffer. Drawing on a survey of 706 households across six municipalities of Western Macedonia, Greece, the core territory of the national lignite phase-out, we validate a four-item Thermal Stress Index (polychoric ω = 0.885; loadings = 0.71–0.88; no differential item functioning by gender, income, or survey wave) and test nine hypotheses and one descriptive benchmark on prevalence, mechanisms, typologies, and targeting. Winter thermal inadequacy reaches 22.9%, which sits above the 19.0% national EU-SILC figure, reported as descriptive context. Dwelling energy features dominate all socioeconomic predictors of severe thermal stress (pseudo-R-squared 0.482 against 0.024), and no direct tenure association remains once envelope quality is included, while the protective association of income operates primarily through dwelling quality and is not observed across the range of inefficient dwellings. Latent class analysis identifies a hidden energy poverty class, 19.5% of households with severe experiential deprivation, above-average income, and no payment problems. A machine learning targeting audit shows that administrative criteria alone identify severely stressed households and show no discriminative capacity for identifying severely stressed households (AUC = 0.517), whereas adding dwelling and financial-strain information raises discrimination to an area under the curve of 0.938. Finally, in this sample, income-based screening is weakly associated with the households reporting severe thermal deprivation.