EU Renewable Energy Governance in Times of Crisis

To what extent has Russia´s invasion of Ukraine led to the changes in the EU’s renewable energy policy? This article focuses on changes in renewable governance, targets and policy instruments. In 2019, the process of re-drafting the EU's energy and climate legislation was launched in line with the European Green Deal strategy. The European Commission published a set of legislative draft proposals in 2021 but these were negotiated and finalised only after February 2022 alongside new policy proposals. This offers a unique setting to trace the effects of the war in Ukraine on EU energy and climate policy. Focusing on revisions to the Renewable Energy Directive and related policy instruments we investigate how the preferences and narratives within the EU institutions changed, and what the policy consequences have been. With an in-depth account of the drivers behind the stability and change in EU energy and climate policy that considers outcomes and also the framing and discursive legitimation of proposals by key actors across several dimensions (including climate, security, affordability), we provide an empirically-rich contribution to the broader literature on European integration and EU policy change in the times of crisis.