A novel multicriteria assessment framework for evaluating the performance of the EU in dealing with challenges of the low-carbon energy transition: an integrated Fermatean fuzzy approach

Climate change, global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, and many other reasons have motivated countries worldwide to change energy systems to move toward low-carbon energy systems; however, the low-carbon energy transition has faced many challenges that motivate the present study to identify the challenges and evaluate the performance of the EU according to challenges. To this end, seventeen challenges were identified through a systematic literature review and classified into five groups: economic, institutional, technical, social, and environmental. Subsequently, fifty-three indicators were selected to measure the performance of the EU in dealing with challenges. Furthermore, a Fermatean “Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis” method was applied to determine the subjective weight of identified challenges, while the method based on the removal effects of criteria was applied to determine the objective weight of selected indicators. Afterward, the “Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution” method was applied to evaluate the performance of the EU in dealing with the challenges of the low-carbon energy transition for 2015 and 2020. The results indicated that energy justice, mitigation costs, land use, and lack of infrastructure are the most significant social, economic, environmental, institutional, and technical challenges. Also, the Netherlands had the best performance in 2015, followed by Germany; in contrast, Germany improved its energy system and took first place in 2020.