Abstract

The aim of this article was to assess the efficiency of the utilization of public funds for climate neutrality. It was concluded that the data gathered in public statistics are not adapted to current challenges and hinder the direct measurement of climate policy objective implementation progress. Due to that, an innovative approach to public intervention efficiency analysis was proposed for the sake of decreasing CO2 emission in 27 European Union (EU) countries, based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method and soft modeling. Statistical data are derived from the Eurostat database and pertain to the years 2005–۲۰۱۹٫ It was demonstrated that activity efficiency of the particular EU countries on climate neutrality varied and that together with the increase in public funds spent on environmental protection, the growth of effects in the field of reaching climate neutrality objectives was not observed. The greatest positive impact on achieving climate neutrality objectives was revealed for activities connected with building renewable sources of energy (RES) and there was no correlation detected for expenditures connected with transport infrastructure, which means that public funds used for their construction did not influence climate neutrality. It was established that, in the analyzed period, the decisions on allocating public funds were not taken on the basis of the expected amount of reduction in relation to the volume of outlays. In order to track the reasons for detected inefficiency, 52 projects were analyzed within the case study, which covered 3738 investments in the replacement of heating sources in one region of Poland. It was revealed that the efficiency of those investments varies; however, due to the full availability of data of the acquired results and outlays devoted to them, a synthetic index of efficiency measurement was established that presents the amount of CO2 reduction for EUR 1. When comparing the analyses carried out on macro and micro scales, it was observed that on the scale of the EU, there is a lack of uniform measurements or benchmarks of projects in the field of CO2 emissions reduction. Meanwhile, from the whole EU’s perspective, it should be reasonable to undertake projects with the highest economic efficiency, irrespective of political and geographical aspects. The results obtained should be utilized by decision-makers to elaborate reference methodologies and good practices in order to successfully implement climate objectives and especially the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD). What should be established are universal, on the EU scale, measurements and rules for gathering and counting data as well as benchmarks for the particular project types.

Introduction

The reasons for climate change and biodiversity loss are of a global character. The most significant source of them is unsustainable consumption, i.e., lack of full reflection of environmental deterioration and nonrenewable resource consumption in the prices of goods and services. The prices of many products are too low, even when the negative impact of products on the environment, ecosystems, or human health is well documented. This pertains mainly to the utilization of fossil fuels for such purposes as heating buildings, transport, and industrial production. Including all the social and environmental costs in product prices would demand global agreement on the so-called carbon tax or adoption of the global emissions trading system. Not all countries currently agree on this kind of solution. Some countries, such as the EU ones, are not waiting for the implementation of a global agreement and are undertaking activities that lie within the scope of their possibilities. The administrative activities usually concentrate on intervention activities, i.e., on providing public funding for changing the means of management that decrease the emissivity of goods and services. However, as a result of such public intervention, the goods and services are even cheaper than they should be, because due to public funding their prices are lower (if not for the intervention of public funds, all the social costs would have to be included by the producer). Additionally, lower price increases consumption scale, and that drives the mechanism of unsustainable consumption.

Conclusions

The aim of the article was to examine the efficiency of the spending of public funds on climate neutrality in the European Union countries. Twenty-seven countries were selected as a research field. The objective was fully met with the use of the DEA method and soft modeling as well as a case study. Conducted research revealed that most EU countries had low efficiency of utilization of public funds for climate neutrality. This results, to a great extent, from the fact that those expenditures mostly focus on activities related to environmental protection, not climate protection. The efficiency of particular countries’ activities strongly varies. There are countries assessed as efficient because they obtained little, but also did not spend much. Today, in particular countries, decisions are taken on the basis of the expected amount of anticipated level of reduction, without including the amount of outlays necessary to reach it.