Ratcheting Up or Following Technology Trends: Changes in the EU Renewable Energy Targets, 1990-2023

Despite consensus on the need to strengthen climate policies, we lack a systematic understanding of how policy ambition evolves over time. Specifically, it remains unclear how to causally explain policy strengthening and distinguish its effects from technological and market trends, how fast policy ambition changes, and whether ratcheting up occurs as frequently as scaling down. To address these questions, we examine renewable energy (RE) policies in the European Union (EU) from the 1990s to the present, including recent developments such as the European Green Deal and the REPowerEU plan introduced in response to the war in Ukraine. The EU is an ideal case study due to its long history of climate and RE policies, its global leadership in climate action, and its reliance on energy imports, which makes renewable energy particularly attractive. The recent EU targets are also important because achieving them beyond the EU would bring RE in line with global pathways to limit warming to below 2°C. Our analysis focuses on solar power, onshore and offshore wind, bioenergy, and the overall RE share in final energy consumption. We demonstrate that RE targets reflect policymakers’ evolving expectations of technology. These expectations, shaped by past technology performance and future visions of its potential, reflected in techno-economic models and scenarios, drive policy targets as much as, or more than, climate ambitions and external shocks. For instance, the 2022 energy security crisis primarily led to the securitisation of existing targets rather than the creation of entirely new ones. We also find that target-setting varies with the phase of RE technology growth. In the early phases, targets are often guided by abstract representations of technology costs and potential in techno-economic scenarios, leading to frequent under- or overachievement. At later stages, targets are informed by realistic cost data and historical performance at the member state and EU levels, resulting in greater alignment with historical trends and more consistent achievement. Historically, RE targets have mirrored trends in technology diffusion and thus ratcheting up has largely been driven by the natural S-shaped trajectories of technology growth. For example, as biomass entered the saturation phase, targets were scaled down, while the continued global acceleration of solar energy led to increasingly ambitious targets. However, the targets for onshore and offshore wind after 2018 deviate from this pattern as they envision unprecedented acceleration in spite of stagnating growth. Though such acceleration has a historic precedent in the rapid expansion of nuclear power in Western Europe during the 1970s–1980s energy crisis, achieving wind power targets faces formidable socio-political barriers that have already constrained growth over the past decade. Our findings shed light on the mechanisms of policy ratcheting up. Rather than being primarily driven by increasing climate concerns and supportive coalitions, policy ambition appears to arise from the perception of technological opportunities. These insights challenge traditional models of climate policy development and highlight critical areas for future research at the intersection of climate objectives, energy security, democratic politics, and technological transitions.