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Linking EU climate and energy policies: policy-making, implementation and reform

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Abstract

This contribution examines the EU’s innovative climate and energy package: how this package of binding policies has been initiated, decided, implemented and reformed. The key argument is that linking climate and energy concerns can help to explain how the EU managed to adopt an ambitious package of policies aimed at achieving 2020 goals. The combination of differently valued issues, side payments to overcome distributional obstacles and the creation of synergies contributed to a successfully negotiated outcome. The consequences for implementation and further policy development towards 2030 are explained by challenges in reproducing these joint EU-level gains at national level and by new circumstances. This may weaken the EU’s chances of realizing a low-carbon economy and ‘leadership by example’ in international climate policy.

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Notes

  1. From February 2010: DG Energy and DG Climate Action.

  2. See: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/green-growth-group-ministers-statement-on-climate-and-energy-framework-for-2030. Accessed 19.05.14.

  3. This article draws on three rounds of interviews in 2011, 2012 and 2014 with policymakers and stakeholders in Brussels and Warsaw.

  4. This is not an exhaustive list of those involved.

  5. One example is the failed EU carbon/energy tax.

  6. Member states determine the use of revenues generated, but with at least 50 % to be used for investment in low-carbon solutions.

  7. See http://www.paiz.gov.pl/sectors/renewable_energy. Accessed 09.04.14.

  8. The Visegrad Group Countries, Romania and Bulgaria Joint Paper on the EU climate and energy framework 2020–2030. May 2014, undated. On file with author.

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  1. The Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Fridtjof Nansens vei 17, 13 26, Lysaker, Norway

    Jon Birger Skjærseth

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Skjærseth, J.B. Linking EU climate and energy policies: policy-making, implementation and reform. Int Environ Agreements 16, 509–523 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-014-9262-5

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