Accelerating Permit Issuances for Renewable Energy Projects

From its inception, the academic study of EU administrative law has relied heavily on doctrinal categories, concepts and principles, borrowed from the administrative law of the Member States. It has largely preferred research agendas such as the Europeanisation of national administrative law or the development of common European principles derived from national administrative laws. Legal doctrine has also engaged in the critique of EU administrative law when it fails to account for the normative standards that national administrative law must usually observe. Whereas all these constitute important research agendas, they reproduce in particularly acute terms a familiar paradox. While the existence of a European administration and administrative law beyond the state cannot be seriously disputed today, legal doctrine tends to consider them, implicitly or explicitly, from the perspective of the administrative law of the nation-state. The so-called “touch of stateness” has had a firm grip on EU administrative law, even though it includes unique aspects that lack any precedent in national laws. The article considers, and proposes a methodological approach to address, the ways in which preconceptions and normative expectations originating in national law have conditioned, and indeed prevented, the deeper doctrinal development of EU administrative law.

The phenomenon of sole-candidate regional head elections in Indonesia has posed several challenges to democratic principles, particularly with regard to legitimacy, accountability, and public participation. This research aims to analyze the legal implications of regional head elections with sole candidates from the perspective of Administrative Law and evaluate their impact on democracy. The method used in this study is normative legal research, employing a legal and conceptual approach that includes a detailed analysis of election regulations, legal doctrines, and relevant literature studies. This method provides a robust framework for understanding the interplay between regulatory frameworks and democratic principles. The research findings indicate that elections with a sole candidate have the potential to undermine the legitimacy of the elected leader, reduce political accountability, and decrease voter participation rates. As a result, there is an urgent need to reform the electoral regulatory framework in Indonesia. Key recommendations include lowering the nomination threshold to foster competition, increasing transparency in the nomination process to ensure fairness, and strengthening political education to encourage public participation. These steps aim to enhance the quality of democracy and prevent the recurrence of sole-candidate elections in the future.

In the literature on community energy, there has been little exploration of how legal forms affect the governance structures employed and resulting impacts to communities. In a settler colonial context like Canada, renewable energy transitions and projects will take place on or near Indigenous traditional territories. In the emerging body of knowledge around Indigenous community involvement in renewable energy the role of the Indigenous economic development corporation (EDCs), a uniquely Indigenous legal form has had little attention. Although a range of governance structures that could support renewable energy projects exist; what has not been explored are which legal forms tend to employ specific governance structures. Employing a national dataset, surveys and interviews, this study assesses the experience and involvement of Indigenous EDCs as a legal form in renewable energy projects, the governance structures EDCs employ, and how these governance structures respond to the needs for self-determination and decision-making power of Indigenous communities. The findings show that at least 26 EDCs are involved in renewable energy projects, that EDCs tend to use economic instruments, while political organizations, (e.g., Band Council), tend to use political instruments, such as impact and benefit agreements (IBAs). Interviewed and surveyed EDCs agreed that ownership of a project is more beneficial than IBAs that tend to be short lived. Although full ownership denotes control over a project, which aligns with UNDRIP, the desired level of ownership varies depending on a variety of factors, such as comfort with risk and how provincial context affects preferred ownership structures.

Business models and innovativeness of potential renewable energy projects in Africa

The paper focuses on administrative law reform within the European Union and raises this problem in the Central Asia countries: as EU advances with its codification and structuring on the existing principles and institutions, the countries of Central Asia start from scratch. A group of academics within the Research Network on European Administrative Law (ReNEUAL), starting with comparative law method, tries to use national administrative procedural laws, case law and principles of the administrative procedure of the European and national courts, as well as the relevant soft law, especially the “Ombudsprudence” aims, taking into account new communication technologies, at developing a relevant draft law. In its independent work between 2009 to 2014 the ReNEUAL network specified the constitutional principles for administrative procedures, naming proposed draft “self-administration law”. It deals with institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the European Union in their relations with the public as well as various cross-cutting issues: rules on the consequences of procedural errors, use of undefined legal terms, optimization of the rules for complex processes. European Parliament’s legal committee made some reference to the ReNEUAL draft and also sought advice from members of the network. Later draft from Parliament, seen as less ambitious, stays within the basis of the currently applicable EU treaties, whereby the ReNEUAL draft would sometimes require changes to the treaty. The proposed ReNEUAL builds transparent basis for exercising human and citizen rights, helps ensure transparency and consistency of the EU administrative institutions. It could also serve as a catalyst for the reform of national administrative procedural laws. The European Commission not convinced that EU administrative law could be summarized in a single legal document, asked for a cost-benefit analysis and impact assessment and publicly consulted on the codification of EU administrative procedure from 15.12.2017 to 09.03.2018, publishing results in July 2018.

• Renewable energy (RE) projects in Indonesia usually have IRR between 10% and 15% and PP around 6 to 30 years • Attractive return usually could be found in large scale RE projects, although there are numerous other factors involved including technology developments, capacity scale, power purchasing price agreements, project locations, as well as interest rates and applied incentives. • Crowdfunding (CF) has big potential to contribute to the financing of RE projects especially financing small scale RE projects. • P2P lending usually targeted short-term loans with high interest rates. Therefore, it cannot be employed as an alternative financing for RE projects in Indonesia. • Three types of CF that can be employed as an alternative for RE project funding in Indonesia. Namely, securities, reward, and donation-based CF. In addition, hybrid models such as securities-reward and reward-donation could also be explored according to the project profitability. • Several benefits offer by securities crowdfunding (SCF) compared to conventional banking and P2P lending, as follows: (1) issuer do not need to pledge assets as collateral; (2) do not require to pay instalment each month; (3) issuer share risks with investors with no obligation to cover the investor’s loss; (4) applicable for micro, small, medium, enterprises (MSMEs) with no complex requirements; and (5) there is possibility to attract investors with bring specific value. • Several challenges that need to be tackled such as the uncertainty of RE regulations; (1) issuer’s inability in managing the system and business; (2) the absence of third parties in bridging between CF platform and potential issuer from RE project owner; (3) the lack of financial literacy of the potential funders; and (4) lastly the inadequacy of study regarding potential funders in escalating the RE utilisation in Indonesia.

This chapter, the General Report gives a comparative insight in the implementation strategies of all EU Member States (apart from Greece) while transposing the requirements of the EU Services Directive (SD) into national (administrative) law. This chapter comparatively analyses the different ways of the implementation in the Member States and by that gives a survey of different concepts and diverse perceptions of the requirements of the EU Services Directive. The General Report presents the commonalities and differences of the implementation of the Services Directive in 26 EU Member States (in particular as regards the most prominent requirements of ‘Points of Single Contact’, ‘tacit authorisation’, screening of national (administrative) law, and electronic administrative procedures et cetera) and gives a fruitful impression of the burden of transposing the Directive’s stipulations into national law. Finally general conclusions are drawn with respect to the impact of the Services Directive implementation in the EU Member States and on their heterogeneous administrative law systems.KeywordsEuropean UnionMember StateService DirectiveAdministrative ProcedureNational LegislatorThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The previous chapter considered the foundations of global administrative law; the present chapter addresses the challenges posed by this development, distinguishing between challenges of a horizontal and a vertical nature.

De-risking Renewable Energy Investments in Developing Countries: A Multilateral Guarantee Mechanism

This comment concentrates on the issue of the Europeanisation of the national administrative law in the Member States of the European Union. It focuses on several developments that have taken place in the recent years in Romania in this field. The exception of illegality with regard to the judicial review of administrative acts is discussed in connection with the concept of voluntary adoption of the EC law principles into the national administrative law. The ruling of the Romanian Court of Cassation and Justice whose decisions have rendered ineffective a provision of the national law based on the broad principle of legal certainty; derived from the EC law, is being analyzed. The paper also analyses legislative attempts that fall within the same process of Europeanisation of national administrative law. The authors argue that the efforts aimed at Europeanisation being advanced by the courts and the legislature are commendable though not yet complete. The unity of treatment between national law and European law will benefit, in time, from such initiatives.

Asian economies are often characterized as having bank-dominated financial systems and underdeveloped capital markets, in particular with regard to venture capital. In economies that banks are the main source of funding, the main obstacle for financing infrastructural projects including renewable energy (RE) projects is lack of access to long-term finance. The second obstacle for development of RE energy projects is their lower rate of return comparing to fossil fuel projects as more subsidies are globally going to fossil fuels. For larger RE projects insurance and pensions are sustainable financing alternatives. Pension funds and insurance companies hold long-term savings, so these institutions could be a proper alternative for financing mega-size RE projects. In addition, utilizing the spillover effects originally created by energy supplies in form of tax revenues refund to RE projects will increase their rate of return and make them interesting for private investors. For smaller-size RE projects, the paper provides a theoretical model for combining utilisation of carbon tax and a new way of financing risky capital, i.e., Hometown Investment Trust Funds (HITs). The paper theoretically shows that by environmental taxation and allocating these tax revenues to HITs, RE projects will become more feasible and more interesting for private investors; hence the supply of investment money to these funds will increase.

The PhD dissertation examines the extent to which Single Supervisory Mechanism procedures – that may lead to national or EU punitive sanctions – comply with the right to privacy, the rights of the defense, the right to effective judicial protection and the ne bis in idem principle. It answers the normative question of how the existing legal framework should be adjusted to ensure compliance with those fundamental rights. 
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\nThe Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) is the legislative and institutional framework that grants the European Central Bank (ECB) a leading supervisory role over banks in the EU member states. The SSM is composed of the ECB and national competent authorities (NCAs). In 2013 the supervision of euro area credit institutions was Europeanised. Regulation 1024/2013 (SSM Regulation) bestows upon the ECB the exclusive competence to carry out specific prudential supervisory tasks vis-à-vis euro area credit institutions.
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\nWithin that system, the EU and national levels are in constant interaction. Final (punitive) decisions are often adopted on the basis of complex composite enforcement procedures. The interlocking of EU and national legal orders for the enforcement of EU law challenges traditional systems of control that were designed for and developed in the context of a single State jurisdiction.
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\nThe dissertation looks into the system of fundamental rights protection, as a mechanism that guides and controls executive action. When the EU and the national legal spheres blend and the different components of the various composite procedures cannot easily be segregated, can fundamental rights – as we currently know them – still fulfil their protective function? 
\nBy bringing together different aspects of EU and national administrative, constitutional and criminal law, the research provides recommendations for enhanced fundamental rights protection in the Single Supervisory Mechanism. It does so by studying the EU- level legal framework surrounding the operation of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, as well as the legal framework of the Netherlands and of Greece governing the cooperation of the Member States' national competent authorities with the ECB. After studying the mutual interactions of the three legal orders, it is concluded that in certain instances there are gaps in complete fundamental rights protection. Concrete recommendations are thus brought forward, which aim at bolstering the protection of fundamental rights at a) the intersection between different legal orders, and b) the interface between administrative and criminal law enforcement. 
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\nThe results of the research can be replicated in other domains of Union law, where enforcement is increasingly being carried out through composite procedures.

Increased integration between innovative ocean energy and the EU habitats, species and water protection rules through Maritime Spatial Planning

Í grein þessari er fjallað um réttindi notenda þjónustu þegar verkefnum hins opinbera hefur verið útvistað með þjónustusamningum byggðum á 30. gr. fjárreiðulaga. Umfjöllunin er í eðli sínu þverfagleg á sviði stjórnsýslufræða annars vegar og stjórnsýsluréttar hins vegar. Hugmyndafræðin, sem liggur að baki þjónustusamningum, byggir á þeirri hugsun að hægt sé að einkavæða verkefni hins opinbera án þess að það hafi nein áhrif á réttarstöðu þeirra sem njóta þjónustunnar. Út frá sjónarhorni stjórnsýsluréttarins er hins vegar horft til þess að verkefni stjórnvalda hafi ákveðinn tilgang og hlutverk ásamt því að um þau gildi ákveðnar reglur sem ekki síst sé ætlað að vernda þá sem njóta þjónustunnar. Þegar verkefni eru færð frá hinu opinbera til einkaaðila missi þessar reglur ef til vill marks og þeir sem þjónustunnar njóta kunni að skaðast og um leið bresti hugsanlega ábyrgðarleiðir innan stjórnsýslunnar. Niðurstöður benda til þess að nokkuð skorti á að lagaheimildir að baki þjónustusamningum sem og að innihald samninganna sjálfra sé nægilega skýrt.

In Search of “Fertile Ground”: How Territorial Characteristics Influence the Social Acceptability of Renewable Energy Projects