A Multi-Criteria Decision-Support Framework for Assessing Country-Level Renewable Energy Investment Attractiveness in the European Union in 2022–2024

Abstract

Renewable energy investment in the European Union (EU) occurs amid substantial variation in resources, market structures, energy security and regulatory quality. This study develops a comparative market-screening framework for the EU-27 in 2022–2024; it does not estimate the determinants of observed investment flows or the expected return of individual projects. A 12-criterion model combining data-driven CRITIC (Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation) weights with TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) was applied. Denmark, Sweden and Austria formed the leading group, whereas Poland ranked last. Under the indicators and EU-27 sample conditions selected in this study, photovoltaic potential, the national electricity-price environment and regulatory quality carried the greatest informational weights; these weights do not represent causal effects or universal investor preferences. Robustness analyses showed very high temporal stability and high consistency after changing the aggregation method, while greater sensitivity arose from the weighting method and the assumed direction of electricity prices. The wind-resource criterion is represented by the midpoint of a reported national range rather than a spatially weighted developable-area average, which limits spatial precision. The results describe the relative maturity and quality of current national investment environments, not future transformation opportunity. The framework can support initial market pre-selection, but investor-specific weighting and project-level due diligence remain necessary.