Secondary EU renewable energy support law: current trends and future options

EUI Seminar with Theodoros G. Iliopoulos

Attaining an energy transition proves more pressing and more challenging than expected. In late 2019 the ‘Green Deal’ emphasised the need to revise EU energy law, as it had just been formed after the ‘Clean Energy Package’. In 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a rethink of these revision plans was also necessitated. In this regard, it is common ground that we need more energy from renewable sources, so that a clean energy transition and a phaseout of Europe’s dependence on (fossil fuel) imports can be attained. In the lack of a sufficient supply of such energy, the law needs to regulate and ensure an intervention in the market that will boost the development of renewable energy sources, without aggravating the energy price crisis that Europe is experiencing.

Given the above, the question raised is, how does and should secondary EU renewable energy support law evolve to ensure a sustainable financing of RES projects? It is noted that the supranational intervention in the field has so far relied on conditions, mostly expressed in State aid Guidelines and in a Commission’s Guidance, that impact on the design and implementation of national support schemes. Support allocation support has always been at the epicentre of the EU legal order, but after the ‘REPowerEU Plan’ one can notice that attention is shifting towards the administrative procedures that necessarily accompany the relevant investments. This seminar presentation will give a critical overview of these developments and will investigate the role of the EU legal order (including considerations of competences and harmonisation) in the design, enactment and implementation of support policies for renewable energy sources.

This seminar presentation is part of dr. Iliopoulos’s research stay at EUI Florence School of Regulation, and is linked with his postdoctoral research ‘Quo vadis, European renewable energy support law?’, funded by Flanders Research Foundation, and conducted within the premises of Hasselt University and Ghent University.

Theodoros G. Iliopoulos is an FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders) postdoctoral fellow in Energy and Environmental Law, working at Hasselt University and Ghent University.