摘要：Economic competitiveness and growth are dependent nowadays on the environmental issues and business excellence involves taking full responsibility for a sustainable future. Probably one of the most disputed topics in today's economic, political or scientific preoccupation is the relation between growth of the economy and its energy intensity. Still there is no agreed model for this relation and more intricately, in developing or developed countries, economic and energy efficiency principles and motives are usually perceived as conflicting. Since the last decades of the 20 century, both the developed and developing world are moving towards knowledge-based economies. This study aims to analyse the correlations between the size of the economy (calculated by the gross domestic product, GDP), the overall level of development of the country towards the Knowledge Economy (as calculated by the World Bank with its Knowledge Economy index KEI) and some main economic indicators concerning the energy sector. Using correlation analysis, this study determines the correlations between the GDP, the KEI, the share of energy from renewable sources in the countries' energy mix as well as the energy intensity and the CO2 emissions/GDP point of 28 EUcountries using the latest available data. The relevance for doing such an study is founded on the evidence that the contemporary business education relies on an extensive knowledge of the business environment.
关键词：correlation; energy intensity; energy and carbon intensity; renewable energy.
