Europe’s Energy Union: A Problem of Governance
On 25 February 2015, the European Commission put forward a proposal for an Energy Union in a document entitled ‘A Framework Strategy for a Resilient Energy Union with a Forward - Looking Climate Change Policy.’ As the title indicates, it was an ambitious document. It called on the European Union (EU) to achieve a ‘fundamental transformation’ of Europe’s energy system to reach the goal of a ‘sustainable, low-carbon and climate-friendly economy that is designed to last’. To do so, it said that ‘we have to move away from an economy driven by fossil fuels, an economy where energy is based on a centralised, supply-side approach and which relies on old technologies and outdated business models. We have to empower consumers through providing them with information, choice and through creating flexibility to manage demand as well as supply. We have to move away from a fragmented system characterised by uncoordinated national policies, market barriers and energy-isolated areas.’
The Commission was looking for an ambitious European initiative on which all member states could work together. The time may well have seemed ripe for this – in other areas (treatment of asylum seekers; Greece and the Euro) the wider European project seemed to be stuttering. But in relation to energy, European countries have a common goal of decarbonisation, and face common challenges in areas like security (the original idea of an Energy Union had been put forward by Donald Tusk, then Prime Minister of Poland, in response to the Ukraine crisis and worries about European dependence on Russia for its gas supplies).
Yet, energy has for many decades been less ‘European’ than most other policy areas. Member states enjoy considerable autonomy – indeed they have a Treaty right to determine their own energy mix. Policy developments at the European level have therefore in the past tended to stem from non-energy agendas – such as the single market and the environment – resulting in accusations that the Commission has developed a ‘silo mentality’ and has failed to integrate its overall approach to the energy sector. In any event, the need for action on an EU energy policy was not seen as pressing during the long period of low energy prices and abundant supplies during the 1990s. However, the higher prices of the 2000s and renewed security concerns such as those prompted by the Ukraine crisis, along with the need for fundamental changes in the energy sector to deliver decarbonisation, have since pushed energy policy up the agenda again and underlined the need for a common European approach.
Read the full Oxford Institute of Energy Studies paper, Europe’s Energy Union: a problem of governance by Malcolm Keay & David Buchan - HERE