Lobbying During the Revision of the EU Emissions Trading System: Does EU Membership Influence Company Lobbying Strategies?

Abstract

Research has shown that industrial firms and organisations engaged in lobbying during the making and revision of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). However, little is known on how they went about lobbying. This article provides insight into industrial lobbying during the revision of the EU ETS by focusing on six industrial firms from Sweden and Norway, examining how and where they lobbied, and whether their lobbying was shaped by originating from an EU member state or not. The article finds that EU membership did influence how and where firms lobbied. Compared to Swedish firms, Norwegian firms lobbied less alone, via national associations and national institutions, and this limited Norwegian firms’ ability to lobby at the European level.

Keywords:

• Corporate lobbying strategies
• energy-intensive industries
• European Union
• EU Emissions Trading
• Norway
• Sweden

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the interviewees for their time, the FNI and specifically the CANES project, and Jørgen Wettestad, John Moodie, Nina Vestlund and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Notes

1. For more information on which sectors are considered exposed to carbon leak-age and the defining criteria, see the Commission’s information page on carbon leakage (European Commission. 2010).

2. The first trading period took place from 2005–2007, second from 2008–2012 and third lasts from 2013–2020.

3. In this article the separate EU institutions as lobbying targets will not be focused upon extensively, this topic has received thorough coverage in a recent publication edited by Coen and Richardson (2009).

4. The two authors come to rather different conclusions, this is probably influenced by the fact that Bouwen studied the ‘demand side’ of the EU lobby — EU institutions; and Eising focused upon the ‘supply side’ — firms and associations.

5. Unless stated otherwise, here and below the description of firms’ lobbying is based on interviews.

6. See Egenhofer (2007) for an explanation on of economic effects of the EU ETS on power producers and energy-intensive industry.

7. There is rich literature on company size influencing lobbying strategies (see, for example, Coen 1998, 2007; Bennett 1999; Eising 2007a; Bernhagen and Mitchell 2009) and this was kept in mind during the study. However, in this study the frequency of using lobbying tactics did not vary together with the size of the company measured in revenues.

8. Norcem and Cementa differed in the information provided on at which EU institutions were targeted by their lobbying via HeidelbergCement. On the one hand the information might not be entirely correct; on the other hand it is also possible that Norcem perceived the importance of HeidelbergCement as a lobbying tactic much higher since it did not have the possibility of lobbying at the EU alone or via its national association.