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German Efforts to Shape European Renewable Energy Policy

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Energy Policy Making in the EU

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Energy ((LNEN,volume 28))

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates how Germany strove to shape the European Union’s (EU) emerging policies on renewable energy. We argue that German decision-makers were motivated by three factors. First, they were influenced by a broad consensus in their own country about the desirability of renewable energy and believed the solutions that worked for Germany would also work for the entire EU. Second, Germany sought to protect the regulatory innovations it had developed by promoting those same regulations at the European level. Third, by establishing a European system that resembled its own, German decision-makers sought to give its own entrepreneurs in the renewable sector a competitive edge in the broader European market. We demonstrate this argument with a process tracing of the development of the 2009 Directive on Renewable Energy Sources (RES).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Walker Institute for International and Area Studies, University of South Carolina, 817 Henderson Street, 251 Gambrell Hall, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Robert Henry Cox

  2. Department of Politics and Geography, Coastal Carolina University, 125 Chanticleer Drive West, Office 344, Conway, SC, 29526, USA

    Mariam Dekanozishvili

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  1. Robert Henry Cox
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  2. Mariam Dekanozishvili
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Correspondence to Robert Henry Cox .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Jale Tosun

  2. Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance (iFQ), Berlin, Germany

    Sophie Biesenbender

  3. Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Kai Schulze

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Cox, R.H., Dekanozishvili, M. (2015). German Efforts to Shape European Renewable Energy Policy. In: Tosun, J., Biesenbender, S., Schulze, K. (eds) Energy Policy Making in the EU. Lecture Notes in Energy, vol 28. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6645-0_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6645-0_9

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-6645-0

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