Study of the Percentage of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Aviation in the EU-27 Countries by Applying Multiple-Criteria Statistical Methods

The transport sector, including air transport, represents an important source of air pollution. The present article deals with the current situation regarding greenhouse gas emissions in the air in 27 European Union (EU-27) member states. Every member state is characterized by selected parameters that determine the unique nature of a particular country (e.g., population, area, life expectancy, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, etc.). In addition to these parameters, there were also other parameters which were monitored as they characterize the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and the impact of aviation on these emissions. The main purpose of the article is to compare the European Union member states on the basis of 15 examined parameters. The identification of similarities between the EU-27 member states with regard to the selected parameters was carried out by applying principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis. The average linkage method was applied to create a dendrogram representing the similarities between the examined member states. The value of the cophenetic correlation coefficient CC = 0.923 confirmed the correct application of the average linkage method. The cluster analysis outputs were five similarity-based homogeneous groups (clusters) into which the 27 member states were divided on the basis of the examined variables.