This book examines the EU’s low-carbon research and innovation (R&I) policy, launched with the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) in 2008.1 The Plan aimed at prioritizing and raising R&I funding, to cut costs for some promising energy technologies and project types while down-emphasizing others.2
Such a focus on certain technological priorities could redistribute future economic opportunities for various sectors, companies, research institutions and member-states. The Plan signalled stronger EU integration, challenging established national prerogatives to decide energy R&I. It also impinged on the principle of technology neutrality, tasking the market to pick winners. All this made the SET-Plan contested, in turn spurring mobilization and political conflict.
The SET-Plan was adopted as part of a larger package of climate and energy policies. This package kick-started the EU’s fight against global climate change and growing energy-import dependency, while it also aimed at boosting the international competitiveness of European businesses. Together with interim targets for 2020,3 a long-term target was set: to reduce EU greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80–95 per cent by 2050. Several EU directives and regulations were adopted, including the Renewable Energy Directive and the revised EU Emissions Trading Directive, to pull market deployment of new low-carbon solutions. The SET-Plan became the complementary technology push pillar, aimed at accelerating innovation through the development and demonstration of technology that would lower costs. Together, push and pull policies would shape the EU’s collective capacity for low-carbon technology innovation and deployment. The package was unprecedented—never had such ambitious EU policies been adopted to stimulate demand and supply of low-carbon technologies.
While EU climate and energy policies have received considerable scholarly attention,4 EU low-carbon technology policies and the politics of innovation have remained largely unexplored terrain.5 This seems puzzling, given the saliency of the SET-Plan for achieving EU decarbonization, as underscored by the Commission: ‘Energy technology holds the key to success. Without a sustained and increased effort, the targets will not be met’ (Commission 2007, p. 4).
This book takes a first step towards filling this knowledge gap. At ten-year anniversary of the SET-Plan, we take stock of its development, from initiation to the current state of implementation, asking: How was the SET-Plan established? Have implementation and performance been in line with original intentions? How to explain the making and implementation of the SET-Plan?
These research questions are analysed through well-established approaches to EU integration and policymaking, approaches that will emphasize the varying roles of different actors and institutions in why and how the Plan came into being, how it was designed, and how it was later implemented. The Liberal Intergovernmentalism (LI) approach explains outcomes at the EU level mainly in terms of the interests and preferences of the member-states. From this perspective, we would expect the member-states to have had the upper hand in establishing, designing and implementing the SET-Plan in line with their low-carbon R&I priorities. By contrast, the Multilevel Governance (MLG) approach contests the view that member-state governments are in full control of policymaking in Brussels and brings in different explanatory factors and mechanisms in the shaping and implementation of EU policy. From this perspective, we would expect that, in addition to the member-states, the EU institutions and non-state actors at EU level (like industry actors and the research community) will determine the low-carbon priorities in the SET-Plan. However, the SET-Plan does not operate in a vacuum. We also explore various factors external to the Plan, including alignment with EU climate and energy policies and opportunities for EU companies in the international technology market.
The book contributes to the social science literature on EU climate and energy policy by highlighting the importance of politics in innovation. The lessons drawn are politically relevant, given the EU’s current efforts at reforming its climate and energy policy, including the SET-Plan. The EU’s climate, energy and low-carbon technology policies are currently undergoing reform as part of the new Energy Union strategy6 with new targets and policies set for 2030.7 Political relevance also extends beyond Europe, given the Paris Agreement’s emphasis on spurring wider international cooperation in low-carbon technology innovation.
We apply a theoretically informed case-study approach for analysing the development of the SET-Plan. Our material includes primary data collected in interviews with key actors involved in making and implementing the Plan, and secondary data obtained from document analysis (see Chap. 2).
Chapter 2 presents the analytical framework for answering the research questions. Chapter 3 assesses the development of the SET-Plan. Here we present the background for launching the idea of a SET-Plan, the initiation of the Plan and how it was decided by the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament. Further, we examine how the SET-Plan was implemented from 2009, tracking technology priorities in the Plan, funding and organization of low-carbon energy R&I resources in specific programmes and projects. Chapters 4 and 5 provide analyses of why and how the SET-Plan was established and implemented, based on theory-informed expectations introduced in Chap. 2. Chapter 6 sums up the analysis and presents our main conclusions, lessons and prospects for the SET-Plan.
References
- Birchfield, V. L., & Duffield, J. S. (Eds.). (2011). Toward a Common European Union Energy Policy: Problems, Progress, and Prospects. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Boasson, E. L., & Wettestad, J. (2013). EU Climate Policy: Industry, Policy Interaction and External Environment. Farnham: Ashgate.
- Bossink, B. A. G. (2015). Demonstration...