The European Union’s Energy Transition: An Integrated Review of Studies Covering the Period 2010–2023

Abstract

This review article synthesizes the results of four previously published empirical studies to provide a unified framework for understanding the economic and energy processes underlying the European Union’s (EU) energy transition. This study aims to demonstrate how energy efficiency improvements, the expansion of renewable energy sources, and the strengthening of energy security are linked in the EU’s long-term energy policy transformation. This review integrates the relationship among energy use and economic growth, the economic determinants of renewable energy sources, and the evolution of energy security and import dependence into a common analytical framework. The four studies cover different but partly overlapping time periods: Studies 1 and 2 cover 2010–2019, Study 3 covers 2015–2023, and Study 4 covers 2014–2023. The period 2010–2023 represents this review’s aggregated temporal scope, rather than a continuous empirical period common to all studies. The results of the synthesis show that the EU energy transition can be interpreted through three closely related strategic dimensions: improving energy efficiency, expanding renewable energy sources, and strengthening energy security. This study’s novelty lies in integrating the results of four previously published empirical studies into a coherent conceptual framework. Rather than establishing new causal relationships, this framework provides a synthetic perspective on the relationships between the main dimensions examined in the author’s research program.