Revising the National Renewables Policy Mix: The role of state aid and other key EU policies (REMIX)

Support instruments for renewable energy are crucial drivers for increasing the renewables share, thereby reducing the CO2 emissions; but such instruments are also contested. In Europe, the first support schemes were adopted in the early 1990s. Since then, renewable energy policy has been changed many times at different levels. REMIX has contributed with new knowledge about which conditions and factors explain these changes in the renewable energy policy at the EU level and in six European countries (France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom). At the EU level, the project has provided insights into the energy policy-shaping role of the Court of Justice of the European Union and how EU state aid law gives the European Commission increased leverage over EU policy development. REMIX has also shown how the EU has been able to reform the EU Emissions Trading System, which experienced a crisis in Spring 2013. Focusing on the national level, the REMIX researchers have conducted a historical analysis of the renewable energy policy in six European countries and show how the EU has affected the countries' support instruments in different ways. In Sweden, civil servants in the energy administration were in the early 2000s inspired by the green certificate discussion at the EU level and brought the idea to Sweden, while the major power companies brought the idea of green certificates from Brussels to Norway. The European Commission was directly involved in formulating the recommendation to the Swedish government when Sweden introduced green certificates in 2003, a support scheme that was later on also implemented in Norway. In the UK, it was primarily a desire to support nuclear power in line with renewable power, which made the politicians change the support scheme from green certificates to an auctioning scheme in 2013. The UK?s policy has had a larger influence on the policy development at the EU level than the other way around. In Germany, the feed-in-tariff scheme had become a success and therefore very expensive; hence, the majority in Parliament saw a need for introducing an auction scheme in 2016. The European Commission exercised a strong pressure on the German government to introduce auctioning. In Poland, becoming a member of the EU has been decisive for the country's introduction of support schemes for renewables. While many politicians have been favouring small scale renewables, the large power companies have pushed for changes in the support schemes for large-scale renewable projects. France has developed a support schemes that are inspired by the UK's auction-based instrument and Germany's feed-in scheme. The has had an increasing impact on the French support schemes. As there is no other comparative volume that focuses explicitly on the political aspects in such a systematic manner over a long period of time, based on process-tracing, REMIX has been an important contribution to the literature on renewable energy. REMIX provides an updated, theoretically informed, empirically rich contribution, including comparative case studies of the political dynamics of the ongoing transitions. It means that the project has contributed with new insights and ideas to many debates in the social science literature about energy transition, comparative climate and energy policy, European integration and Europeanisation studies. REMIX has also contributed to increase the competence in Norway about how and to what extent Norwegian policy makers and industrial actors are affected by EU policies. In particular, the case studies have been important for providing knowledge about conditions that affect the design of national support instruments for renewable energy and how the EU influences such decisions at the national level. In cooperation with the user partners, REMIX has contributed to prepare Norwegian and Swedish industry actors in the development of renewable energy and market policies at the EU level in future, through the development of scenarios. The project has been ambitious in the sense that it has been developed with the purpose of providing useful information for the user partners, while at the same time being theoretically ambitious. We have solved this by providing information and early results continuously at partner meetings with user partners.

Et viktig mål for prosjektet har vært å kunne bidra med kunnskapsbygging for nordiske energiaktører. I evalueringen av prosjektet, oppga alle respondentene at prosjektet hadde hjulpet dem med å identifisere faktorer som påvirker utformingen av nasjonale virkemidler for fornybar energi og hvordan EU påvirker nasjonale støttesystemer for fornybar energi. Et flertall svarte at prosjektet har resultert i kunnskap som er nyttig for respondenten selv eller egen organisasjon, og at prosjektet har gjort at personen selv eller andre i egen organisasjon bedre forstår prosesser, som de ellers ville ha hatt problemer med å forstå. Gjennom scenarier, har REMIX forberedt norske og svenske energiaktører på fremtidig utvikling av fornybarpolitikken. I tillegg gir REMIX viktige bidrag til litteraturen på fornybar energi, fordi det hittil har vært en mangel på sammenlignende bidrag, som eksplisitt har hatt fokus på politikkutforming over et lengre tidsrom.

The REMIX project focuses on a group of carefully selected EU and EEA countries, asking: to what extent and how have national renewables policy portfolios been shaped the EU policy mix, and what are the main prospects ahead? By improving policy-mix foresight, the REMIX project will help Nordic energy actors to make wise strategic decisions and profitable investment decisions. The outcome of the EU 2030 climate and energy policy discussions and future EU state-aid rulings will influence renewable energy growth rates, the balance between intermittent and stable base-load energy production, and the energy security situation of most EU and EEA countries. REMIX will examine the factors that have shaped and will shape the balance between market measures and more direct technical regulations. Market measures and direct technical regulations may be seen as opposing forces, but there may also be synergistic effects, with for instance state aid policy dismantling subsidy schemes disliked by market proponents. We will pay attention to the following EU policy : the climate and energy targets, the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), energy governance mechanisms (Commission proposal), revision of the 2009 renewable energy directive, and EU state aid. At the national level we will explore how the EU policy mix influences regulations that affect the economics of renewables investments: renewable energy support schemes and capacity mechanisms. REMIX is a political science project with a significant juridical component, and will also draw on inputs from economists as well as practitioners. It consists of three components: 1) case studies of factors that shape the EU renewables policy mix, 2) comparative case studies of how the EU renewables policy mix influences national renewable energy portfolios in France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the UK, and 3) development of scenarios and guidelines to improve renewable energy policy foresight.