Quantifying management efficiency of energy recovery from waste for the circular economy transition in Europe

Energy recovery is a viable option for waste management to integrate prevention, reuse and recycling when those strategies are not feasible. As such, efficient management of energy from waste can facilitate the circular economy (CE) transition. Efficient waste and energy management can assist sustainable development by curbing environmental degradation and resource depletion, improving energy security and health and safety conditions and creating new jobs and income. European countries have put substantial efforts and investments to improve their management efficiency of energy from waste and align to CE. To this end, this study develops a robust composite indicator to clarify and quantify this nexus, calculating European countries' achievements and filling a literature gap. A set of statistical techniques is employed to analyze a large panel dataset of 17 countries and 14 energy efficiency variables for 15 years. One may observe that Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, the UK and Germany get positive outcomes. Conversely, the remaining 12 European countries get negative performances at the global level. Results vary across the different sub-indexes. 5 sensitivity and robustness analyses corroborate the results and confirm the hypothesis. The findings can assist the CE transition and may be used for research, management and policy purposes.