Clustering analysis on G20 countries' climate change efforts regarding the energy sources

Over the last few decades climate change and its effects on the planet as well as mankind have been the topic of international debates and agreements. There has been an increasing emphasis on switching from fossil fuels to renewables as well as transforming the economy to a circular economy model. The purpose of this study is to construct a clustering analysis on G20 countries to suggest similar policies for renewable energies to the countries that fall under the same group. First, missing value imputation on the dataset was performed and then yearly data were averaged to create a single data point for each variable. Next, to account for the 80% of the variation of the dataset Principal Component Analysis was performed. Among the clustering analysis methodologies, k-means and hierarchical clustering was chosen to evaluate the groups of countries. The results of this clustering analysis showed similar groupings for the G20 countries. This study aims to show an alternative approach to policy-making procedures regarding coal phase-out and net zero goals that covers multiple countries while taking the differences between these countries into account.