This book outlines the legal regime underpinning the European Energy Union, which provides secure, sustainable and affordable energy.

This book will explore how far the European Union can go towards forming its 28 member states into an Energy Union. It analyses how the EU can achieve its goal of providing energy affordability, security, and sustainability in the light of internal dynamics in European energy markets, and of the urgency in mitigating climate change. It also considers the increasingly unfavourable external context for the cost and security aspects of Europe's go-it-alone decarbonization effort created by oil price volatility and geo-political tensions with Russia. Chapter 1 provides an overview of past energy and climate decisions in order to situate current EU policy and successive chapters tackle the new energy challenges. The volume covers the growing tension between Brussels' campaign to liberalise and integrate energy markets through cross-border competition and trade, and increasing state intervention through national renewable subsidies that fragment the market. It also analyses the revolution in electricity markets and investment incentives turned upside down by renewable subsidies, and proposes a new market design to guide Europe through this uncharted territory. The book examines the need for flexible demand response from energy consumers as a match to increasingly inflexible energy supply from weather-dependent renewables. It also looks at the EU's 2030 targets and proposed emission trading and renewable energy reforms, and assesses how they measure up to the climate commitments of other countries as well as to the EU's long term climate aims. Underscoring the EU's inability to exist in its own energy bubble, two chapters analyse whether European industry can stay competitive with the rest of the world and how Europe is diversifying its energy sources away from Russia. The conclusion examines what a genuine energy union might mean in terms of EU governance of national energy policies, and how far short the EU will fall short of this.

Open discussion invited by the European Commission on energy supply and security.

Energy Policy in the European Union analyses the development of energy policy in the EU focusing in particular on the key period between 1985 and 1995 and the role of the major states - Germany, France, Italy, and Britain - and their interaction with the Commission. The role of interest groups as well as other EU actors is also covered in-depth as well as the European Energy Charter, EU policy towards the East, and the relationship between energy and the environment.

The world is currently undergoing an historic energy transition, driven by increasingly stringent decarbonisation policies and rapid advances in low-carbon technologies. The large-scale shift to low-carbon energy is disrupting the global energy system, impacting whole economies, and changing the political dynamics within and between countries. This open access book, written by leading energy scholars, examines the economic and geopolitical implications of the global energy transition, from both regional and thematic perspectives. The first part of the book addresses the geopolitical implications in the world’s main energy-producing and energy-consuming regions, while the second presents in-depth case studies on selected issues, ranging from the geopolitics of renewable energy, to the mineral foundations of the global energy transformation, to governance issues in connection with the changing global energy order. Given its scope, the book will appeal to researchers in energy, climate change and international relations, as well as to professionals working in the energy industry.

This book explains the EU’s climate policies in an accessible way, to demonstrate the step-by-step approach that has been used to develop these policies, and the ways in which they have been tested and further improved in the light of experience. The latest changes to the legislation are fully explained throughout. The chapters throughout this volume show that no single policy instrument can bring down greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge facing the EU, as for many countries that have made pledges under the Paris Agreement, is to put together a toolbox of policy instruments that is coherent, delivers emissions reductions, and is cost-effective. The book stands out by the fact it covers the EU’s emissions trading system, the energy sector and other economic sectors, including their development in the context of international climate policy. This accessible book will be of great relevance to students, scholars and policy makers alike. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9789276082569, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Recent years have seen a major growth in the European law concerning the operation of the energy industry, especially with respect to electricity and gas. Several directives have been adopted that are aimed at the promotion of competition in this key sector of the European economy. At thesame time, the jurisprudence of the European Court had developed further on matters such as access to networks, import and export monopolies and security of supply.In this book the authors examine the principal legislation, Treaty provisions and decisions of the Court of Justice and Court of First Instance of the EU as they related to the promotion of competition in European energy markets. In particular, two chapters are devoted to a detailed analysis of theprovisions of the two directives that set out common rules for the creation of an internal market in the electricity and gas sectors. In each case, the analysis is set in the context of the various programmes of energy market liberalization and privatization in the Member States, which aresummarized in this book. However, the authors also take the wider pan-European context into account, explaining the requirements and the implications of the European Economic Area Agreement, the Energy Charter Treaty and the Europe Agreements with countries of Central and Eastern Europe.The approach adopted by the authors is both analytical and historical. They locate the legislation in the context of the EU Internal Market programme that began in the late 1980s and explain the roles played by the various parties (energy industries, consumers and EU institutions) in shaping thefinal legislation. Importantly, they explain how the framework character of the energy directives has led to further important rule-making in the implementation of the directives across the EU. They conclude that a co-ordinated response between the European Commission and the national regulatorswill be essential to resolve problems arising in the transition to a competitive energy market in the EU.