Implementing the EU renewable energy directive in Norway: from Tailwind to Headwind

ABSTRACT

Following the 2009 EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED), Norway has overachieved its national renewables target and taken the European lead in new wind power. This seems puzzling as Norway had a surplus of renewable energy and the government opposed the EU-induced national target. Employing a dynamic approach to implementation and its consequences, we examine three explanations. From an EU adaptation-pressure perspective, the RED enabled joint implementation, which Norway utilized through its flexible certificate system with Sweden. From a domestic politics perspective, internal pressures led to favourable depreciation rules that stimulated pro-windpower interests. Third, from a policy feedback perspective, protests from municipalities resulted in a reform of the licensing system. These explanations proved complementary, and more persuasive than the main alternative explanation of drastic cost reductions in windpower technology. Our findings speak to the energy democracy, energy policy and implementation literatures.

KEYWORDS:

• EU policies
• implementation
• renewable energy
• wind power
• Norway

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers, Tor Håkon Inderberg and Lars. H. Gulbrandsen for extremely helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Interviews

NVE (December 2019)

Anton Jayanand Eliston

Mari Hegg Gundersen

Arne Olsen

NORWEA (November 2021)

Øystein Schmidt Galaaen

Energy Norway (November 2021)

Eivind Heløe

Solgunn Furnes

TrønderEnergi (December 2021)

Ståle Gjersvold

Statkraft (December 2021)

Caroline Østlie

Lars Ragnar Sutlaberg

Notes

1. Renewable Energy Directive (229/28/EC), Preamble (1).

2. The RED included a separate mandatory target of 10% renewables in the transport sector.

3. We interviewed three NVE key officials who oversee the electricity certificate system and have experience from the EU negotiations. Interviews are based on confidentiality and are used as background information for interpreting written sources.

4. ‘Energy interests’ refers to energy import dependency and the energy mix.

5. The ‘goodness-of-fit approach’ has been criticized for having weak explanatory power, for excluding actor interests and for being static (Treib 2008). When this approach is applied to implementation in Norway, preferences, energy interests and dynamic development are included.

6. The domestic politics perspective can be expanded to include additional variables such as potential changes in policy style and administrative organization (see Skjærseth et al. 2016).

7. ‘Pivotal’ actors are those whose agreement is necessary to change the status quo.

8. Other parts of the package included a revision of the EU Emissions Trading System, an Effort-sharing Decision on the non-ETS sectors and a directive on Carbon Capture and Storage.

9. Extended from the end of 2020.

10. Sweden increased its target by 2 TWh. From 2016, the total target for electricity certificates is 28.4 TWh.

11. It is uncertain how many new plants will be realized.

12. 2281 GWh in hydropower; 8571 GWh in windpower.

13. As of April 2020.

14. Modern wind turbines are nearly 200 m. tall: they change the landscape visually and necessitate major construction work for infrastructure such as road development.

15. The NVE is responsible for granting hydro- and windpower licenses in Norway.

16. From 2012 until the end of 2015, the certificate market had triggered investments totalling only 108 MW of wind power in Norway, with average annual production of 337 GWh. Total installed wind capacity in Norway was 873 MW at the end of 2015.

17. The summary is based our examination of 69 municipalities’ hearing responses.

18. The National Association of Norwegian Windpower Municipalities.

19. https://motvind.org/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Research Council of Norway