The Impact of Energy Consumption on the Three Pillars of Sustainable Development

Silviu Nate, Yuriy Bilan, Danylo Cherevatskyi, Ganna Kharlamova, Oleksandr Lyakh and Agnieszka Wosiak
Additional contact information
Silviu Nate: Department of International Relations, Political Science and Security Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, 550324 Sibiu, Romania
Yuriy Bilan: Faculty of Management, Rzeszów University of Technology, 35-959 Rzeszów, Poland
Danylo Cherevatskyi: Institute of Industrial Economics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 03057 Kyiv, Ukraine
Oleksandr Lyakh: Institute of Industrial Economics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 03057 Kyiv, Ukraine
Agnieszka Wosiak: Institute of Information Technology, Lodz University of Technology, 90-924 Lodz, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-20

Abstract: The paper analyzes the impact of energy consumption on the three pillars of sustainable development in 74 countries. The main methodological challenge in this research is the choice of a single integral indicator for assessing the social component of sustainable development. Disability-adjusted life year (DALY), ecological footprint, and GDP (Gross domestic product) are used to characterize the social, ecological, and economical pillars. The concept of physics, namely the concept of density (specific gravity), is used. It characterizes the ratio of the mass of a substance to its volume, i.e., reflects the saturation of a certain volume with this substance. Thus, to assess the relationship between energy consumption and the three foundations of sustainable development, it is proposed to determine the energy density of the indicators DALY, the ecological footprint, and GDP. The reaction to changes in energy consumption is described by the elasticity of energy density functions, calculated for each of the abovementioned indicators. The state of the social pillar is mostly dependent on energy consumption. As for the changes in the ecological pillar, a 1% reduction in energy consumption per capita gives only a 0.6% ecological footprint reduction, which indicates a low efficiency of reducing energy consumption policy and its danger for the social pillar. The innovative aspect of the research is to apply a cross-disciplinary approach and a calculative technique to identify the impact that each of the pillars of sustainable development imposes on energy policy design. The policy of renewable energy expansion is preferable for all sustainable development pillars.

Keywords: ecological; economic; social pillars; energy density; energy policy; ecological footprint; regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/5/1372/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/5/1372/ (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:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:5:p:1372-:d:509402

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

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