@Article{ee.2026.088348,
AUTHOR = {Alexandra Ciucu, Cristina Georgiana Zeldea},
TITLE = {Responsible Energy Use—An EU Assessment},
JOURNAL = {Energy Engineering},
VOLUME = {},
YEAR = {},
NUMBER = {},
PAGES = {{pages}},
URL = {http://www.techscience.com/energy/online/detail/28133},
ISSN = {1546-0118},
ABSTRACT = {Pollution is among the main challenges facing humanity, which is why this concept is reflected in several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The present research aims to identify how similar EU member states are in terms of a set of variables intended to capture energy responsibility. To this end, indicators were selected from the Eurostat database referring to the share of energy from renewable sources, new zero-emission vehicles, air emissions accounts, environmental tax revenues, and the share of fuels in final energy consumption. To achieve the objective of the research, an unsupervised clustering method, namely the K-means algorithm, was applied to the 27 EU member states for the period 2015–2024. Accordingly, the analysis began with a factor analysis, through which a comprehensive factor score matrix was created and subsequently used as the basis for the cluster analysis. Among the results obtained, the formation of three clusters was observed, while significant differences between groups were identified for several indicators. Moreover, the robustness of the clustering solution was confirmed through variance decomposition, with between-cluster variance being considerably higher than within-cluster variance.},
DOI = {10.32604/ee.2026.088348}
}