The development of European Green Energy sector: descriptive statistics and impacts on decarbonization

The development of European Green Energy sector: descriptive statistics and impact on decarbonization. In recent years climate change has emerged as one of the most pressing issues Humanity has ever faced. Its effects on the ecosystem are now becoming severe and permanent. To ensure Earth's survival, immediate action is required, and this necessity cannot be further ignored. Over the years, the European Union has taken the lead in directing and coordinating Member States' efforts toward a sustainable economy and energy transition. Recently, the European Commission has introduced the European Green Deal, which provides a roadmap to drive the EU towards a path of sustainable development. Cleantech companies (private companies that focus on the development of sustainability solutions) play a critical role in addressing environmental challenges such as climate change, pollution and resource depletion. The EU supports Cleantech through different financial and technological initiatives. My thesis focuses on three technological categories of Cleantech companies, that work with Sustainable energy production, Sustainable fuels and Energy-efficient industrial technologies, and that are generally referred to as Green Energy. Firstly, I have analyzed in depth the composition of the Green Energy sample. I have described different aspects of the companies collected in the dataset, from technological category classification to geographical distribution, from financial data to patents ownership, from year of incorporation to Venture Capital investments. The elaboration of these descriptive statistics allowed us to understand better the sample and gave us a complete picture of Green Energy’s current state. Then, I have summarized what is stated by academic literature regarding environmental degradation, studying the correlation that links it to economic growth, the impact that renewable energy has on Carbon Dioxide emissions and how policies could foster a solid and wide Green Energy ecosystem. I have analyzed the different initiatives undertaken by the European Union to help renewable energy diffusion, and the trends that the EU is experiencing in decreasing greenhouse gases emissions and fossil fuels usage. In the end, I carried out a preliminary analysis to understand if and to what extent there is a correlation between a given country’s CO2 emissions and the financial performance of its Green Energy companies, represented by Sales and Total Assets aggregated by country. I repeated this analysis on seven countries, performing multiple linear regressions between country-level aggregated CO2 emissions and financial metrics. No clear pattern among all the countries analyzed was found.