Analysing the Institutional Setting of Local Renewable Energy Planning and Implementation in the EU: A Systematic Literature Review

Imke Lammers,Thomas Hoppe

doi:10.3390/su10093212

Abstract

Due to the liberalisation of the European Union’s (EU) electricity sector, stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities in local energy planning and implementation are not well-defined in legislation anymore. To investigate what local energy planning and implementation processes look like in the post-liberalisation era we conduct a systematic literature review by addressing the question ‘which institutional settings of local renewable energy planning and implementation in the EU’s post-liberalisation area has prior empirical research identified?’ For this systematic analysis we conceptualised the analytic concept ‘action situation’ (as developed by Elinor Ostrom), from an energy governance and energy policy perspective. The literature review was conducted in two cycles: A systematic database search and snowballing. Four clusters of search terms were used to search two databases. The selected articles were coded using Atlas.ti. Our in-depth qualitative analysis revealed the institutional arrangements used in the reported local energy planning processes were found to not be ideal for the introduction of renewable energy technologies. No type of actor group seems actively to support the realisation of renewable energy projects. Moreover, a high dependence on financial subsidies was found. These results are useful for practitioners and policy-makers as they show which possibilities and limitations stakeholders encounter in the changed level playing field of local energy planning. The article also presents propositions for future research.

Highlights

The European Union’s (EU) energy market reforms in the 1990s changed the organisational set-up of the European electricity sector through liberalisation of, and privatisation in electricity markets
Through the systematic literature review we were able to analyse which institutional settings of local renewable energy planning and implementation have been identified by prior empirical research
Due to the fact that an overview is missing of the local energy planning and implementation practices used in the post-liberalisation era, we conducted a research synthesis of literature that reports empirical findings on governance practices used in local energy planning and implementation processes

Summary

Introduction

The European Union’s (EU) energy market reforms in the 1990s changed the organisational set-up of the European electricity sector through liberalisation of, and privatisation in electricity markets. With the increased production of renewable-based electricity, new actors started to emerge in the electricity sector, for instance individuals (e.g., prosumers), community energy initiatives, ICT companies, energy service companies (ESCOs), aggregators and research centres. While electricity provision and planning used to be the task of formally legitimated organisations with clear roles and responsibilities, the liberalisation of the electricity market, stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities were not well-defined anymore. This lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities is problematic for decision-making on the introduction of renewable energy technologies at the local level. Disagreements are likely to emerge on the distribution of roles and responsibilities [5], and on the other hand, the increase in the number of potentially involved actors makes local energy planning more complex [6]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion