Sustaining and updating energy transitions in Europe in the face of new goals and challenges

Abstract

The panel aims to update the discussion on energy transitions in European countries. It follows on from panels held at previous ECPR General Conferences in 2017 and 2019, which resulted in a Handbook of Energy Governance in Europe (Knodt and Kemmerzell 2022) that has since been published. The panel will analyze national transition paths in light of a significantly altered political context since the mid-2010s. This context change is mainly based on two aspects: first, the increasing role of the EU in energy and climate policy with its goal of climate neutrality by 2050 and the European Green Deal, which requires a reorientation of energy policy towards full decarbonization. This can be seen in efforts to extend the energy transition beyond the electricity sector, the implementation of sector coupling technologies, and the integration of green hydrogen into the energy supply. At the same time, nuclear power is making a comeback in many European countries. Secondly, besides the deliberate goal of climate neutrality, we face successive crises since 2020: first the pandemic, than the energy supply crisis, mainly due to the external shock of the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine, which affects European countries in various ways. The panel would like to invite contributions that analyze how European countries are adapting their energy policies to these new challenges. A theoretical interest is whether these challenges are primarily processed within existing structures, or whether they lead to significant change, either at the institutional or instrumental level. The panel features national case studies as well as comparative analyses. Reference: Knodt, Michèle and Jörg Kemmerzell (Eds.) 2022: Handbook of Energy Governance in Europe, Cham: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43250-8

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