1.1 Introduction
The purpose of this book is twofold. Firstly and most fundamentally, it is an account of the role played by interest groups in setting the policymaking agenda in the lead up to the decision about the EU’s 2030 climate and energy targets. The analysis, and the account that flows from it, is informed by the multiple streams approach (MSA), an established but still evolving theory of the policy process introduced by John Kingdon in 1984. Secondarily, it is a commentary on the implications of our findings for MSA and for future research. This chapter introduces the policymaking and scholarly context for the rest of the book. It is broken into five sections. First, we describe the research context including a brief history of EU energy policy. Section 1.2 also reviews existing studies on the topic of EU energy policy and policymaking, Sect. 1.3 introduces and reviews the literature on European interest representation , noting the relative dearth of work on energy and climate policy. Section 1.4 briefly discusses the significance of the burgeoning literature on socio-technical transition and transformation. Section 1.5 summarises and concludes the introduction.
1.2 Energy Policy in the European Union
Human influence on the earth’s climate system is occurring, largely as the result of emission of greenhouse gases. The negative consequences of these changes are being felt by societies across the world, and unless emissions are reduced radically, these impacts are very likely to become more severe (IPCC 2014; The Royal Society 2017). The European Union (EU) is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases,1 80% of which is associated with energy production, conversion, transportation and use (European Environment Agency 2016).
There can be little doubting that the European Union is a major force in many policy domains from agriculture to international trade, nor that energy has been central to the story of the EU since its earliest days. In the 1950s, creating a common market in coal and steel, the primary basis of military power, under the oversight of a new authority was seen as an important means of ensuring interdependence between the nations of Europe (especially France and Germany ) which would make war ‘not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible’ (Schuman 1950). But, despite the fact that energy cooperation was at the heart of the Treaty of Paris which established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) , the European Commission did not have legal competence to act in the field of energy under the 1957 Treaty of Rome (Lucas 1977). Nevertheless, making use of its competence in other areas, most notably trade harmonisation, a number of energy measures were introduced by the Commission in the 1960s and early 1970s, beginning with an instrument known as ‘the Protocol of Agreement on Energy Problems’ in 1964 (Benson and Russel 2015; Lucas 1977; Weyman-Jones 1986; Cameron 2011, p. 125). Until the late 1980s, however, the EC Commission’s Directorate-General responsible for energy was limited to energy research and forecasting (Matlary 1998).
The institutional reform set in train by the Single European Act (SEA) of 1986 and the subsequent drive towards a general European ‘internal market’ formally brought energy onto the European agenda (Matlary 1998). The inclusion of an energy section in what became the Maastricht Treaty which formally created the European Union in 1992 was proposed but did not make the final text (Duffield and Birchfield 2011). The 1990s saw slow progress in energy integration with a lack of will on the part of the member states to act on proposals by the European Commission preventing a collective response to the energy challenges of the time (Duffield and Birchfield 2011).
The first years of the twenty-first century, however, witnessed a profusion of action on energy. Energy supply concerns, climate change and the drive to create an internal energy market all played a role in raising energy up the EU’s agenda. These concerns saw the inclusion of an energy title in 2009s reform to the legal basis of the EU, the Lisbon Treaty .
1.2.1 EU Climate and Energy Policy
Prompted by an emerging understanding of the threat posed by climate change, from the late 1980s the EU began tentative moves towards implementing a Europe-wide policy to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Despite the European Commission’s failed attempt to establish a carbon tax in the 1990s and resistance to carbon trading within the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the idea of a European emissions trading system took hold. In the autumn of 2001, a design for an emissions cap-and-trade system covering installations in the electricity and industrial sectors was proposed and approved. Trading in the EU Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS ) began in January 2005 (Wettestad and Jevnaker 2016).
A turning point in the story of energy and the EU was an informal summit at Hampton Court, UK , in 2005 at which, led by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair , leaders of the EU countries agreed that ways towards greater cooperation on energy and climate change should be found (Birchfield 2011; Skjærseth 2013; Eikeland 2012; Mcgowan 2011). The disruption of gas supplies to parts of the community due to a dispute between Russian and Ukrainian gas companies in 2006, as well as the EU’s ambitious role as a leader in global climate action also added to a new political commitment to EU energy action. The most visible manifestation of this commitment was the 2020 climate and energy package agreed in 2007. Designed to meet part of the EU’s threefold energy goals of clean, secure and competitive energy, the core of the package focused on three targets. There was a commitment to a 20% reduction in emissions (30% in the event of a global deal on climate change), an increase of EU energy consumption from renewable sources to 20% and a 20% improvement in energy efficiency. In 2009, the renewable energy target was implemented in the ...