Friends or foes?
- Energy efficiency measures and the deployment of renewable energy are commonly presented as two sides of the same coin-as necessary and synergistic measures to decarbonize energy systems and reach the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. Here, we quantitatively investigate the policies and performances of the EU Member States to see whether renewables and energy efficiency policies are politically synergistic or if they rather compete for political attention and resources. We find that Member States, especially the ones perceived as climate leaders, tend to prioritize renewables over energy efficiency in target setting. Further, almost every country performs well in either renewable energy or energy efficiency, but rarely performs well in both. We find no support for the assertion that the policies are synergistic, but some evidence that they compete. However, multi-linear regression models for performance show that performance, especially in energy efficiency, is also strongly associated with general economic growth cycles, andEnergy efficiency measures and the deployment of renewable energy are commonly presented as two sides of the same coin-as necessary and synergistic measures to decarbonize energy systems and reach the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. Here, we quantitatively investigate the policies and performances of the EU Member States to see whether renewables and energy efficiency policies are politically synergistic or if they rather compete for political attention and resources. We find that Member States, especially the ones perceived as climate leaders, tend to prioritize renewables over energy efficiency in target setting. Further, almost every country performs well in either renewable energy or energy efficiency, but rarely performs well in both. We find no support for the assertion that the policies are synergistic, but some evidence that they compete. However, multi-linear regression models for performance show that performance, especially in energy efficiency, is also strongly associated with general economic growth cycles, and not only efficiency policy as such. We conclude that renewable energy and energy efficiency are not synergistic policies, and that there is some competition between them.…
Author details: | Lana OllierORCiD, Marc André MelligerORCiDGND, Johan LilliestamORCiD |
---|---|
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3390/en13236339 |
ISSN: | 1996-1073 |
Title of parent work (English): | Energies : open-access journal of related scientific research, technology development and studies in policy and management |
Subtitle (English): | Political synergy or competition between renewable energy and energy efficiency policy |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Place of publishing: | Basel |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2020/12/01 |
Publication year: | 2020 |
Release date: | 2023/02/02 |
Tag: | EU; climate policy; energy efficiency; policy competition; policy cycle; renewable energy |
Volume: | 13 |
Issue: | 23 |
Article number: | 6339 |
Number of pages: | 23 |
Funding institution: | European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020; research and innovation programEuropean Research Council (ERC) [715132] |
Organizational units: | Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Sozialwissenschaften |
DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 30 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie / 300 Sozialwissenschaften |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Gold Open-Access |
DOAJ gelistet | |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |