This study examines the causal relationship between economic growth and renewable energy consumption using data for 28 countries of European Union, taken from Eurostat database for years from 1995 to 2015. In addition, motivated by EU Directive 2009/28/EC, the tendency of the share of renewable energy consumption into the final energy consumption is analysed. Various panel data techniques implemented in EViews are used. The empirical results suggest a positive impact of renewable energy consumption on economic growth, and emphasize bidirectional or unidirectional Granger causalities between the two macroeconomic indicators, for each country in the panel. These results justify the political decisions of EU concerning the necessity of increasing the renewable energy consumption, and prove that this type of energy consumption has a strong positive impact on economic growth. Thus, the inclusion of such policies in future EU and national strategies is further motivated. Finally, by means of linear regression, an increasing trend was found for the ratio between renewable energy consumption and final energy consumption for all but one of the EU countries.

This study analyses the relationship between per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, gross domestic product, gross inland energy consumption, and renewable energy consumption for a panel of 28 countries of European Union in the period 1990–2016. Two theoretical models, a quadratic and a cubic one, are used to estimate the shape of the environmental curve and to test the Kuznets hypothesis. The panel cointegration approach proved the existence of long-run equilibrium relations among the four macroeconomic indicators. Empirical estimations, using panel data techniques, as well as heterogeneous regression for each individual country in the panel, show non-conclusive evidence for the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. The least square estimates, with the variables in log per capita form, reveal that the inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis is verified for the panel and for 17 of the 28 EU countries. Estimates of the cubic model show that the environmental curve has an inverted N-shaped form. These results do not hold when the values are in non-logarithmic form. In addition, the estimations for all models show that an increase of gross energy consumption leads to an increase of GHGs, while an increase of renewable energy consumption leads to a reduction in GHG emissions.

European Union Directive 2009/28/EC established that the share of renewable energy in the final energy consumption should reach a target of 20% by 2020 in European Union (EU) countries. This study analyses the tendency of this share using data for EU 28, taken from the Eurostat database for the period 1995–2016. First, after a brief statistical and economic analysis of the three macroeconomic indicators at EU level, five regression models (polynomial, ARIMA) were used to estimate the evolution of the share of renewable energy consumption into the final energy consumption, all of them showing an increasing trend for this indicator. The positive impact of the EU Directive in increasing this share was proved by means of a perturbed regression model. Forecasts of this share for the 2020 horizon were obtained, all showing that the EU target is yet to be reached. Secondly, four groups of EU-countries were considered, according to the final energy consumption. Empirical estimations of renewable energy share into the final energy consumption showed increasing trend for all groups, while providing forecasts quite different from the EU ones. Also, economic interpretations of the results are performed.

This paper analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic growth and electricity consumption and investigates the hypothesis of the influence of this consumption on the gross domestic product (GDP) for Romania. Using time series on monthly electricity consumption and quarterly GDP and a multi-linear regression model, we performed an analysis of the evolution of these indicators for 2007–2020, a comparison between their behavior during the financial crisis vs. COVID-19 crisis, and empirically explore the relationships between GDP and electricity consumption or some of its components. The results of the analysis confirm that the shock of declining activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic had a severe negative impact on electric energy consumption and GDP in the first half of 2020, followed by a slight recovery. By using a linear regression model, long-term relationships between GDP and domestic and non-household electricity consumptions were found. The empirically estimated elasticity coefficients confirm the more important impact of non-household electricity consumption on GDP compared to the one of domestic electricity consumption. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the results of the study could be useful for optimizing energy and economic growth policies at the national and European levels.

This paper analyses the relationship between the following indicators: income inequality, gross domestic product, risk of poverty threshold and median equivalized net income for a panel of 28 countries of European Union (EU) over the period 2005-2016. Two theoretical regression models, a linear and a quadratic one, are used to estimate the influence on income inequality of the other three indicators. Empirical estimations, using panel data techniques on three different data panels, confirm the Kuznets hypothesis that income inequality tends to increase with early economic development and tends to decrease when a country reaches a certain level of development. We found that for emerging EU countries, income inequality has a growing tendency with a positive economic growth and maybe reduced by increasing risk of poverty threshold or median equivalized net income. For highly developed EU countries the situation is completely opposite. At EU level, the influence of gross domestic product on income inequality is strongly determined by its trend in the highly developed EU countries, while the influence of risk of poverty threshold and median equivalized net income on income inequality is strongly determined by their trend in the emerging EU countries.

This paper analyzes the evolution and influence of gross domestic product per capita, labor force participation rate, gross fixed capital formation, and personal remittances on economic growth for European Union (EU) countries, using data from the World Bank (1996–2019) and from Eurostat (the first two quarters 2019–2020). The study has three components: statistical analysis, analysis of the evolution for each country and EU, and estimation of the impact on economic growth rate by using a linear multifactorial regression model for 1996–2019, 1996–2008, and 2009–2019. The model was validated by econometric techniques. The long-term causal relationship between exogenous and endogenous variables was validated by the Granger test. The results of the study show a differentiated evolution of the indicators, and that all indicators are severely affected by the 2008 financial crisis and the debut of the COVID-19 crisis in early 2020. The model used shows the significant positive influence of labor and investment, and the minor effect of remittances on economic growth. In the context of the COVID-19 epidemic, the results of the study could be arguments to be considered for the redesign of economic policies at European Union level.