Have climate policies accelerated energy transitions? Historical evolution of electricity mix in the G7 and the EU compared to net-zero targets

M. Suzuki, J. Jewell & A. Cherp. (2023). Have climate policies accelerated energy transitions? Historical evolution of electricity mix in the G7 and the EU compared to net-zero targets. Energy Research & Social Science 106, 103281. Open Access. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103281

Climate policies are often assumed to have significant impacts on the nature and speed of energy transitions. To investigate this hypothesis, we develop an approach to categorise, trace, and compare energy transitions across countries and time periods. We apply this approach to analyse electricity transitions in the G7 and the EU between 1960 and 2022, specifically examining whether and how climate policies altered the transitions beyond historical trends. Additionally, we conduct a feasibility analysis of the required transition in these countries by 2035 to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5°C. We find that climate policies have so far had limited impacts: while they may have influenced the choice of deployed technologies and the type of transitions, they have not accelerated the growth of low-carbon technologies or hastened the decline of fossil fuels. Instead, electricity transitions in the G7 and the EU have strongly correlated with the changes in electricity demand throughout the last six decades. In contrast, meeting the 1.5°C target requires unprecedented supply-centred transitions by 2035 where all G7 countries and the EU must expand low-carbon electricity five times faster and reduce fossil fuels two times faster on average compared to the rates in 2015–2020. This highlights the insufficiency of incremental changes and the need for a radically stronger effort to meet the climate target.

Do policy targets change technology growth trajectories? Understanding the steady growth of onshore wind in Europe

Vetier, M., Pavlenko, A., Jewell, J., Cherp, A. and V. Vinichenko (pre-print). Do policy targets change technology growth trajectories? Understanding the steady growth of onshore wind in Europe. POLET Working Paper series 2024-3

ABSTRACT

Conflicts surrounding the expansion of wind power in Europe are increasing (Diógenes et al. 2020; Lundheim et al. 2022) which has hindered its growth in recent years (Pavlenko and Cherp 2023). However, in the near future, wind power needs to expand much more rapidly to meet the EU's climate and energy security goals (Vinichenko et al. 2023; Pavlenko and Cherp 2023). In fact, meeting the goals for renewable power of the Fit for 55 Package (EC 2021), REPowerEU (EC 2022d) and updated Renewable Energy Directive (EC 2023e) would require faster growth of onshore wind power across the EU compared to what has been observed not only in the EU but even in most individual countries (Vinichenko et al. 2023).

In this paper, we seek to understand whether and how European countries plan to re-accelerate the recently stalling onshore wind power deployment considering the increasing conflicts surrounding this technology. We start with analyzing the current and historical growth patterns and maximum growth rates of onshore wind power in European countries and compare these to a similar analysis completed in 2021 (Cherp et al. 2021). We show that in most European countries (except Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, and Sweden), the growth of wind power is no longer accelerating or is even slowing down.

Subsequently, we look into 17 countries’ recently updated National Energy and Climate Plans to identify their national targets for onshore wind power deployment and analyze whether and how these targets would change the historical growth trajectories. We find that eleven countries have set national targets to accelerate the historical growth of wind power, and five countries aim for growth that is faster than ever observed globally. This demonstrates the challenges for policies to overcome the inertia of socio-technical systems surrounding the deployment of wind power.

To investigate whether and how such challenges were addressed historically, the paper reviews cases of re-acceleration of onshore wind power growth in the past. We identify five notable cases of past re-acceleration (Austria, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, and Spain) and show that these have mostly been due to major changes in the national policy environment. We find that historically stalling was induced by halting or significantly reducing subsidies, regulatory uncertainties, and the enaction of policies unfavorable to wind power growth, and re-acceleration was in most cases linked to the increasing of regulatory certainty, re-establishment or increasing of subsidies, and withdrawal of unfavorable policies. This is unlikely to guide the current situation.

We then investigate policies proposed by the European Commission and find that these aim to address administrative, technical, and financial problems rather than social conflicts over land and other issues. Finally, we provide a detailed analysis of Sweden’s case of attempting but failing to overcome a recurring onshore wind siting deadlock.

We conclude by pointing out that to meet the onshore wind targets, European countries will likely need to implement different policy measures than what they have applied in the past.

Link to pre-print

Accelerating technology growth through policy interventions: the case of onshore wind in Germany

L.Nacke, A.Cherp, J.Jewell (pre-print). Accelerating technology growth through policy interventions: the case of onshore wind in Germany. POLET Working Paper Series 24-3

ABSTRACT

Climate change mitigation requires sustained and rapid growth of renewables such as wind and solar PV to decarbonise electricity systems. This is mirrored in recent policy commitments, such as the goal to triple global renewabels deployment, or national targets such as Germany’s ambition to triple the speed of renewables deployment. A natural question following from such targets is: How difficult (or easy) is it to achieve and sustain such rapid renewables growth – what type and strength of policy interventions are required? Through a combined analysis of technology growth models and policy interventions we show that the number and diversity of policy interventions increases with increased deployment of wind power in Germany. We also show that the financial compensation for new wind power has not been declining as fast as costs of wind power technology. This indicates that prolonged growth of mature low-carbon technologies may require increasing rather than decreasing policy effort in spite of technological innovation and cost decline.

Link to pre-print

Accelerating energy transitions under security crises

A. Pavlenko, J.Jewell, A. Cherp (pre-print). Accelerating energy transitions under security crises. POLET Working paper series 24-1

ABSTRACT

To mitigate climate change, transition to clean energy should proceed faster than in the last three decades. Can policies overcome economic, technological and social inertia to achieve the required acceleration, and if so, under what conditions? The 2022 REPowerEU plan is an excellent case to investigate these questions because it responds to a profound energy security threat (Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) in advanced economies that are already the global leaders in decarbonisation. Here we analyse to which extent REPowerEU and related policies aim to accelerate energy transitions, what has enabled the ambitious targets, and whether these are feasible. Considering policy-technology co-evolution involving multiple feedbacks and non-linear growth, we define policy-driven acceleration as a significant deviation of feasible policy goals from the S-curve of technology diffusion reflecting empirical trends, near-term projections and analogies.

We show that REPowerEU sets unprecedented targets implying acceleration of all renewables and a radical deviation from the onshore wind growth trajectory. At the same time, REPowerEU is not an isolated crisis response, but a continuation of a policy shift that started around 2018 and included the European Green Deal (2019), the ‘Fit for 55’ package (2021), and related plans. Before 2018, policy targets extended historical trends and did not become more ambitious over time. Although motivated by climate concerns, they were only weakly linked to long-term climate goals but strongly shaped by technological uncertainties and economic costs. Energy security was seen as protection from short-term shocks through resilient infrastructure and did not directly shape the goals for renewables. In contrast, post-2018 policies decisively link the net-zero vision for 2050 and the 2030 renewable targets.

In 2022, these climate-derived targets were securitised through directly linking them to energy independence from Russian oil and gas, now viewed as a long-term security concern. Both net-zero and energy independence goals were inspired by the declining costs of renewables and by the emerging technological opportunities of substituting fossil fuels in transport, industry and heating through low-carbon electrification. We analyse whether the new targets are feasible using the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’ view of feasibility by Jewell and Cherp (2023). We argue that the main barriers for onshore wind are conflicting land uses, for offshore wind - uncertainties around the infrastructure and complementary technologies, and for solar power - grid integration. We show that the required growth of each renewable technology is similar to the growth of nuclear in Western Europe in the 1960s-1980s. The similarities between the two contexts, including the presence of an energy security crisis, give hope that the planned growth is feasible. However, the combined growth of solar and wind is entirely unprecedented, although on a smaller scale, a similarly fast growth of nuclear occurred in France and Sweden. Our findings indicate that policy-driven acceleration of energy transitions might be possible but requires a unique constellation of motivations and capacities. Historical analogies provide useful benchmarks for the attainable speed of transition, but more research is needed on the applicability of policy lessons across different low-carbon technologies.

Link to pre-print.