Abstract:

The content of the paper consists of: 1) conceptualisation of the significance of energy and energy policy at the stage of contemporary transformation of the energy sector in theoretical terms, 2) empirical analysis covering economic growth, energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The purpose of empirical research is to assess the advancement of transformation of the energy sector on the basis of numerical statistics. The percentage indicators of changes in energy consumption and CO2 emissions in highly developed countries and emerging economies were presented. For the aim of displaying structural changes in the energy sector, the indicators of the share of traditional and renewable energy resources in the group of the largest consumers in 2000 and 2018 were used. The simple correlation method was applied to test the intensity of the relationship between the pairs of the following variables: GDP, energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Results from the analysis: 1) a decrease in energy consumption in highly developed countries, in particular in Japan (by 16.1%) and the European Union (by 2.3%), an increase in energy consumption in developing countries with high GDP dynamics (by 163.4% in China, 111.3% in Iran and 92.3% in India), 2) a decline in shares of global CO2 emissions in the USA (by 10.0 pp) and the EU (6.9 pp), while a high rise in shares of CO2 emissions was recorded in China (15.1 pp) and India (3.1 pp), 3) the largest growth in the share of renewables in energy consumption was achieved by Brazil and the EU (by 5.3 pp, 4.1 pp), whereas India, Indonesia and China had a significantly higher share of renewables in 2000 compared to 2018 (by 20-23.7 pp).