Policy Learning of Industrial Coalitions: Ukrainian Renewables Between Politicization, Europeanization and War

How can internal policy-learning processes within organized economic interests in the renewable energy sector maximize their chances of economic survival in an unstable regulatory and geopolitical environment? The main aim of this article is to trace the organizational evolution of four major Ukrainian renewable energy business associations across three interrelated dimensions: 1) policy problem-solving activities, understood as short-term responses to pressing sectoral challenges; 2) strategic knowledge-production activities, ranging from the aggregation of sector-specific information to the articulation of broader policy visions; and 3) cooperation with foreign actors, including international organizations, foreign aid entities, and transborder business networks. The analysis focuses on four business associations: the Ukrainian Renewable Energy Association, the European-Ukrainian Energy Agency, the Ukrainian Wind Energy Association, and the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine. Operating jointly, these organizations constitute a sectoral coalition representing Ukrainian renewable energy interests. Drawing on insights from the broader literature on policy learning (Dunlop 2009; Dunlop and Radaelli 2022), this study contributes to research on advocacy coalition politics in energy transitions (Szarka 2010; Bosetti et al. 2013; Hess 2018; Malmborg 2021) as well as to scholarship on the role of economic interest coalitions in the European economic integration of third countries (Langbein and Börzel 2013; Bruszt and Karas 2020; Langbein et al. 2024). In particular, the article shifts the analytical emphasis from learning processes as elements of dynamic intra-coalitional competition toward internal organizational development, knowledge production, and external alliance-building within a single sectoral coalition. Methodologically, the study combines process tracing with qualitative textual and video content analysis. The empirical material is drawn from the websites and social-media channels of the associations, complemented by state documents and independent journalistic open-source sources. The activities of Ukrainian renewable energy business associations are examined across three main periods: (1) an incubation stage characterized by strong political protection and centralized beneficiaries within the power constellation of the pre-2014 Ukrainian ruling elite; (2) the 2014–2022 period of rapid industry growth, accompanied by the emergence of systemic state indebtedness related to feed-in-tariff repayment; and (3) the post-2022 period, marked by extensive war-related physical damage, a parallel state shift toward more market-based support schemes, green-recovery rhetoric, the intensified transposition of the European Clean Energy Package and opening of new political opportunities in framework of formal start of EU accession process. The first core claim of this study is that the expansion of international linkages by Ukrainian renewable energy business associations—including engagement with the Energy Community, the EBRD, and investor-related national embassies—should be understood as a compensatory strategy substituting for weak domestic social and political party-based support in the defense of sectoral interests. The second key argument is that tracing the sector’s collective activities reveals a gradual shift away from the dominance of clientelist networks toward more inclusive business coalitions operating through increasingly formalized advocacy channels.