Clustering Analysis of Energy Consumption in the Countries of the Visegrad Group

The main purpose of this paper is to assess energy consumption with a breakdown into main sectors of the countries that belong to the Visegrad Group. The specific objectives aim to determine changes in energy absorption, its productivity, structure by sectors and to show the similarities of the Visegrad Group countries to the other EU states in terms of the sectoral energy absorption structure. All members of the Visegrad group, i.e., Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, were purposefully selected for the study as of 31 December 2018. The research period covered the years 1990–2018. The sources of gathered information were the literature on the subject and OECD data. The following methods were used for the analysis and presentation of materials: explanations, tabular and graphical depictions, descriptive statistics, dynamics indicators, and cluster analysis performed with the following methods: k-means, hierarchical agglomerative clusters and DIvisive ANAlysis (DIANA). There is a limited number of previous studies on the relationship between the national level of economic development and energy consumption in different sectors of industry. Additionally, there are no such analytical projects concerning EU states. The article fills the research gap in this area. It was established that the dynamics of productivity growth over the nine years (2010–2018) was similar in the countries of the Visegrad group and on average for the EU. This means that the members of the Visegrad group did not actually improve their energy efficiency as compared to the EU average. The reason may be the increasingly faster implementation of modern technologies in developed economies of Western Europe as compared to the developing countries, which include the members of the Visegrad group. The conversion of the economy had a very large impact on changing the structure of energy absorption by sector. Industry and agriculture lost their importance. On the other hand, the transport and service sectors benefited. As a result of the cluster analysis, all EU (European Union) states were divided into four groups. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary found themselves in one group, along with most Western European countries. This may mean that the economies of these states have become unified with highly developed economic systems. Slovakia found itself in the group of states with a greater importance of industry. The study complements the contribution to the theory. From a practical point of view, it shows the impact of economic transformation on changes in energy consumption in individual sectors, which may be a model of transition in this area.