23. Measuring the Provision of Access to Sustainable Energy in the EU as a New Task of Modern Economics in Line with Agenda 2030

The purpose of the chapter is to measure and assess the level of sustainable energy provision in EU countries in the context of Goal 7 of the Agenda 2030. Ensuring access to sustainable energy for people and increasing energy efficiency in all sectors of the economy is one of the most important goals both in the European Union (EU) and globally. It was recognized that access to modern energy services at affordable prices is necessary to achieve the goals of the concept of sustainable development, Agenda 2030, Europe 2020 strategy, and the European energy policy. Precise evaluation of achievements in this area (using modern quantitative methods) is a relatively new issue, both in economic practice and in modern economics; therefore, there is a need to develop ways to measure access to sustainable energy, other than simply analyzing the time series of data in individual years on which the previous research was based. Hence, an attempt was made to use the taxonomic measure of development, to assess the achievements of individual EU countries, and to organize them according to the degree of sustainable energy provision, which is a novelty in this respect and includes the article to the research trend oriented toward the operationalization of the concept of sustainable development. The research used eight core indicators for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), seven reported by Eurostat and set by the UN. The research period is 2010 and 2016. The conducted research allowed to formulate conclusions on the current achievements of the member states and the EU as a whole with respect to the achievement of Goal 7 of the Agenda 2030, as well as formulating recommendations for necessary actions.