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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. This work's rationale. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience is a hot topic within the international development agenda and Sustainable Development Goals. Nowadays, resilience plays a crucial role in improving the quality of life of vulnerable categories and is designed as a major strategy to face the diverse dimensions and dynamics of vulnerability. Energy results among the most relevant fields of applications of resilience policies, especially when it comes to electricity. As a multidimensional concept, energy resilience policies must relate to the dimensions of sustainability – here considered as the interplay between the economic, social, environmental and governance dimensions. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon, energy resilience can be effectively outlined making use of composite indicators techniques. This paper presents the following new results: i) energy resilience is defined and ranked, strengthening a composite indicator for both OECD and non-OECD countries; the determinants of energy resilience are investigated; ii) an innovation on the construction of the World Bank's Regulatory Indicators on Sustainable Energy is operated. Our exercise makes use of an approach based on interval data to assess the sensitivity of the measure from different specifications. For the same scope, the robustness of the ranks obtained is analyzed through an uncertainty analysis. These choices aim to enhance the soundness and the validity of the composite indicator. The methodology provides a more reliable baseline to validate the results and the conceptual assumptions undertaken. It is found that, according to the diverse theoretical frameworks and methodologies applied, some countries vary considerably both in the pillars that aggregate the variables and within the minima, the centers, and the maxima of the intervals. • Energy and resilience are compelling development policy, regulatory, and scientific quests. • Energy resilience is measured by an interval data composite indicator. • Interval data is a robust method for measuring energy resilience. • GDP is related to energy resilience. • Results vary with respect to linear methods in that they allow to better represent uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vulnerability has garnered an increasing attention from academia, international community and industry. Nonetheless, formal definition, mainstreaming, and measurement of vulnerability are still flawed in the economic literature. Energy vulnerability, intended as the exposure of an energy system to adverse events and change, often overlaps with other energy policy concepts such as resilience, security, poverty, justice, and sustainability. This paper improves understanding of vulnerability in economics, energy, and sustainability studies by: i) constructing a dataset on energy vulnerability made of 180.000 observations; ii) formally defining energy vulnerability, while considering the regulatory framework and development agenda; iii) building a composite indicator on energy vulnerability; iv) analyzing and ranking the energy vulnerability of a vast number of OECD and non-OECD countries; v) testing for robustness checks. The analysis suggests that GDP is not necessarily a leading driver for energy vulnerability, whilst resource embedment is, since fossil and renewable energy producers are less vulnerable. Eventually, the paper validates that green countries are less vulnerable, differently from cold, heavily-industrialized, and highly-consuming countries. • GDP is not a strong driver for energy vulnerability. • Green, scarcely consuming, warm, non-industrial countries perform better. • Resource endowment and electricity access matter. • Fossil and renewable energy exporters display a lower vulnerability. • Rankings for the single energy vulnerability pillars vary widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work introduces a revised version of the Food Sustainability Index , proposed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition in 2016. Our Adjusted Food Sustainability Index features two important advantages: 1) it employs the Mazziotta-Pareto method to compute weights, hence granting an objective aggregation criterion and 2) it does not take policy variables into account, thus focusing on the status quo . The policy variables are aggregated into the Policy Index , measuring the quality of the food sustainability policies. We compute the two indices for 25 countries worldwide, then we use the Data Envelopment Analysis to evaluate policy efficiency. Our results show that country-level variation in policy efficiency is wide and policies affect food sustainability significantly, especially when they target nutritional challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]