Energy and Circular Economy: Nexus beyond Concepts

Florinda F. Martins (), Hélio Castro, Miroslava Smitková, Carlos Felgueiras and Nídia Caetano
Additional contact information
Florinda F. Martins: Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto—ISEP, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 431, 4249-015 Porto, Portugal
Hélio Castro: Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto—ISEP, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 431, 4249-015 Porto, Portugal
Miroslava Smitková: Institute of Power and Applied Electrical Engineering, FEI—Slovak University of Technology, Ilkovičova 3, 841 04 Bratislava, Slovakia
Carlos Felgueiras: Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto—ISEP, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 431, 4249-015 Porto, Portugal
Nídia Caetano: Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto—ISEP, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 431, 4249-015 Porto, Portugal

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 5, 1-19

Abstract: Energy and materials are increasingly important in industrialized countries, and they impact the economy, sustainability, and people’s future. The purpose of this work was to study the relationship between energy and the circular economy using methods such as Pearson’s correlation and a principal component analysis. Thus, 12 strong correlations were found, with 5 of them between the following relevant variables from two different subjects: the correlations of the raw material consumption, the domestic material consumption, and the material import dependency with the final energy consumption in transport (0.81, 0.92, and 0.81); the correlation of the circular material use rate with the final energy consumption in households (0.70); and the correlation of the material import dependency with the final energy consumption in industry (0.89). The time series forecast was only conclusive for the waste generated, showing that it will increase in the next 10 years.

Keywords: energy; material flows; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/5/1728/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/5/1728/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:5:p:1728-:d:1342080

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().