The Paris Agreement: Its Implications for Energy Governance in the European Union

The European Union played an important role in the design and adoption of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. The EU was successful in securing five-year mandatory reviews for country commitments and was present at every major development in the negotiations. The EU is expected to play a key role also in the implementation of the agreement both by liaising with international partners towards its implementation and through the policies that the EU is implementing at home. For instance, by developing a legal and financial framework that favors energy efficiency and green energy. What impact does this have on the actors involved in European energy governance? In particular, are new actors empowered as a result of the commitments taken by the EU under the Agreement? The role of companies in European energy governance remains understudied with the main focus in EU energy studies being placed on the preferences of the European institutions and governments. This study hopes to remedy this by analyzing in particular the impact on the energy industry. The study hypothesizes that, given the Agreement, climate friendly energy industry will play an increasingly important role in European energy policy-making. The European Union has a reputation for consulting stakeholders in the process of developing policies. Energy industry concentrates a lot of technical knowledge and it is in a good position to provide advice on economical, efficient and technologically feasible ways of ensuring the transition to an energy system low in carbon. Methodologically, this paper relies on the analysis of EU legislation and policy documents concerning climate and energy, on data publicly available or collected through field visits and on over a dozen interviews with European energy stakeholders taking place in autumn 2016-spring 2017.