Analysis of renewable energies in European Union

The paper's main research objective is to analyse the renewable energy sector in the European Union member states. The first step of the research was to generate clusters of countries based on the share of renewables in total energy produced and the countries' energy dependence. In order to generate the clusters, we applied the k-means clustering method based on the data obtained from Eurostat. By using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, three clusters of countries have been generated. In the next step the EU states were ranked based on the following criteria: share of renewable energy sources, share of renewable electricity, share of renewable heating and cooling and share of renewable energy in transport. Then the main characteristics of the renewable energy policy in each member state have been highlighted. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.