2025/09/08 by Max Willems · 1 voice · 5 citations
Energy · Social Sciences · #Energy (signal processing) #Energy policy #European Union Policy and Governance #European union #Feed-in tariff #Global Energy Security and Policy #Renewable energy #Social Policy and Reform Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/13501763.2025.2550492
published in Journal of European Public Policy 33(6), 1705-1733 (Routledge)
openalex publication_date 2025/09/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Since the 1990s, policymakers have been grappling with the challenge of financing the transition to renewable energy, which requires much higher upfront capital investments than fossil fuel-based electricity. To reduce the cost of capital, European governments – like many others across the globe – have devised various policy instruments to derisk investments. This article traces how these instruments have evolved in the European Union over time and why. Based on an actor-centred historical-institutionalist analysis of the policy process, it reconstructs how a coalition of the European Commission and a group of key energy incumbents drove two pivotal changes in the European renewable energy derisking regime. In the first instance, it managed to enforce a higher degree of competition in the context of rising policy costs and fiscal pressure during the post-global financial crisis period, through which it established itself as dominant policy coalition. Following a ‘lost decade’ of stalled renewables deployment and the increased geopoliticization of energy, the European regime partially reverted to more robust revenue derisking. However, retaining competition in the allocation of support kept this policy coalition in place – and perennially shaped the distributional outcomes of European electricity markets.