The EU Cohesion Policy implications to GHG emissions from production-based perspective

The European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy is the cornerstone of the EU policy. Therefore the aim of this study is to cover the implication of cohesion policy to greenhouse gas emissions from production-based perspective. Considering that the main task of the EU Cohesion Policy 2007–2013 was the convergence process, by applying the β-convergence the study showed that the EU Cohesion Policy (2007–2013) was implemented successfully and economic convergence in the EU countries was observed. Furthermore, the convergence of GHG emissions from a production-based perspective was confirmed as well. Evaluating the correlation coefficient between the technological contribution to changes in GHG emissions and GDP growth rate, the results showed that contribution of technological progress was the largest in those EU countries where the fastest GDP growth rate was observed. However, despite the considerable technological contribution to GHG emissions reductions, it does not offset the effect of production scale in the countries such as Bulgaria, Poland and the Baltic States. In terms of economic structural changes, the result revealed that economic growth did not seem to make an effect on larger contribution of economic structural change to GHG emissions reductions. Meanwhile, considering the implication of the new EU Cohesion Policy (2014–2020), it was shown the importance of the EU 2020 strategy implementation. Using correlation coefficient between changes in GHG emissions and changes in the share of renewable energy, expenditure on R&D as a percentage of GDP and energy efficiency, only the growth in the share of renewable energy resources had significant direct impact on the reduction of GHG emissions. Therefore the promotion of the share of renewable energy as well as technologies which contributed to the decrease of GHG emissions and the growth of energy saving rate, is the most important in seeking GHG reduction in the EU.