Introduction: Industry 5.0 challenges European industries to elevate their systems with the help of technological and digital transformations and, at the same time, motivates them towards achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Energy system transformations and sustainable transitions are the key concepts in decarbonizing energy sources, believed to greatly contribute to the achievement of climate neutrality. The mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is supported by energy production from renewable resources instead of fossil fuels. The present study assesses how efficiently the member states of the European Union (EU) convert primary energy into useful energy and how this efficiency affects carbon emissions, using energy data collection since 1990 by the Directorate-General for Energy of the European Commission.
Methods: We analyze the relationships and trends between energy conversion efficiency and carbon emissions based on metrics including system energy conversion efficiency, carbon intensity of energy use, and energy loss ratio. The system energy conversion efficiency determines how much useful energy comes from the national energy system relative to the total energy input. The carbon intensity of energy use defines how carbon-efficient the energy conversion system is by the ratio of total CO2 emissions to total energy output. The energy loss ratio quantifies wasted energy in terms of thermodynamic inefficiencies.
Results: Based on the latest available energy data from 2023 for the EU, we report a 71.58% energy conversion efficiency, 90.70% carbon intensity, and an energy loss ratio of 28.42%. Furthermore, we analyze trends among the member states based on the three studied metrics between 1990 and 2023, classifying the countries.
Conclusions: We assess the importance of improving energy conversion efficiency and reducing emissions in the EU using harmonized EU energy statistics, enabling a system-level assessment of national energy performance. Our study relates the changes in practices in energy generation on a country-level over the years to the system energy conversion efficiency, carbon intensity of energy use, and energy loss ratio.
