Sustainability versus the dynamic eco-efficiencies of EU countries

Abstract

In this study, the sustainable efficiencies of 25 EU countries are analyzed, and practicable paths for improvement are offered on a country-by-country basis. Dynamic eco-efficient production is not necessarily sustainable, and countries must therefore ensure the fulfillment of endogenously determined targets through additional measures. As the goals of maximizing production and avoiding pollutants seem to oppose each other, an optimization program with multiple simultaneous objective functions enlarges the dynamic eco-data envelopment analysis concept. The countries’ economies and their impacts on the environment are described in Eurostat and ECB data on the countries’ flow and stock inputs, output, resources for environmental protection, and emissions from 2014 to 2022. The examination reveals that the development of each EU country is far from sustainable. The countries that performed best were those that introduced carbon taxes early on, allowing their economies to largely adapt. The usage of the term “sustainable efficiency” is thus misleading, being used to measure static/dynamic eco-efficiency, without analyzing whether efficient production processes are indeed sustainable. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first measurement of sustainable efficiency. To distinguish the approach developed in this article from traditional models, this study uses the term “conserving efficiency”.