Known, Unknown, and Unknowable: Governing Uncertainties in the EU Energy Sector

The Union’s energy policy has, as of recently, become a hot topic once again. What was already a multi-faceted and cross-cutting policy field, has been made increasingly complex as a result of growing techno-scientific, economic, and political uncertainties as well as a pressing need for new and sustainable energy sources that are in line with the Union’s environmental goals embedded within the European Green Deal. The very characteristics of this field necessitate a deep level of cooperation among the multitude of actors involved. To facilitate this, the European Commission has supported or established several committees and working groups, such as the Clean Energy Industrial Forum launched in 2019 under the Clean Energy for all Europeans Package. The forum, bringing together CEOs and leaders of the clean energy industry, is led by the Commission and has among its aims to identify common regulatory barriers and provide recommendations for future policy action. Thus, it seems that the Commission is, once again, relying on more informal means of regulation, and particularly network governance. This is by no means a surprising approach, as such regulatory tactics are often employed to deal with issues of uncertainty and techno-scientific complexity (Trubek, Cottrell, & Nance, 2005), and their overarching importance has been repeatedly underlined in the literature (cfEberlein & Grande, 2005). In fact, according to Vantaggiato (2020), the formation of networks can be a policy goal by itself. This, within itself, is fair - adaptive and flexible regulation seem appropriate to deal with complex and ‘wicked’ policy problems. There is, however, a flipside. This overreliance on informal structures and networks shows two main things. Firstly, once again the political dimension of risk regulation is highlighted, which renders the Commission’s complete reliance on epistemic legitimacy (Weimer, 2015) lacking in substance. Secondly, that such adaptive means of regulation can be efficient and effective, they also may have the capacity to incorporate additional factors of risk assessment, like uncertainty and socio-economic and ethical considerations. At this stage, however, it is unclear how this interaction between environmental risk, uncertainties, and informal institutions take shape in practice. This study proposes the case of the Clean Energy Industrial Forum. This forum resembles what Provan and Kenis (2008) define as a lead organization network, where an actor, who is also a member of the network, leads the initiative. The aim here is to explore how certain risk perception can contribute to the establishment of such networks by the Commission and if these networks can, in time, provide a satisfactory answer to the high contestation of regulating risk.