Sub-project 2
Legal obstacles and opportunities for renewable energy in the EU
- with proposals for new legislation to facilitate sustainable development
This sub-project aims at producing proposals for how to develop new legislation that facilitates the implementation of an energy policy where sustainable development is an essential aspect at the same time as energy supplies and competitiveness are maintained. The analysis should also be able to provide a basis for choosing legal means to more purposive pursuit of such development in Sweden.
Introduction
The law plays a substantial role in carrying out a national and international policy on energy and climate. Legal rules can facilitate energy conservation and the use of renewable energy resources, but they can also – and often in practice do – hinder or counteract such development by protecting other interests, not least contrary environmental interests.
The goals of this sub-project are to identify obstacles and counteracting factors in the legal system as well as to propose legal solutions that facilitate implementation of an energy and climate policy with greater use of renewable energy resources – in other words, pathways/policies toward a sustainable energy system.
Problem formulation and added value of the research
The results of previous research show that it is necessary to analyze more closely the legal norms – both facilitating and counteracting ones – when reorganizing the energy system with a greater share of long-term sustainable kinds of energy. Legal research thereby becomes an essential part of Pathways’ overall objective, since the legal preconditions must be analyzed and, where necessary, changed if new systematic and technical solutions are to be of practical use.
The project will treat legislation on environmental and natural resources, including legislation for planning and land. The following issues are to be dealt with:
• How can basic material rules for environmental assessments (principles and environmental requirements) be formulated in order to facilitate development of renewable energy resources?
• Should individual legal judgments with balancing of interests be replaced by (more or less) general, precise standards?
• How can the rules for examining applications and planning be designed to shorten the decision process?
• Is the legislation clearly designed so that it facilitates a phase-out of energy forms that are (politically) undesirable?
• How should legislation be designed to facilitate implementation of renewable energy resources in regions where the interest in development is politically weak?
• How should the connection between different forms of energy be taken account of in legal examinations?
• How should legal systems be designed in order, on the one hand, to clearly define limits for what is allowed and, on the other hand, to facilitate changes when reality or the knowledge of it changes?
Methods
The method applied in carrying out the project involves an investigation of current law in certain countries, chiefly legal texts and possible preliminary work and practice. This comparative method means that certain countries’ legal regulation is compared in terms of the issues described above. We will primarily investigate legal preconditions for renewable energy resources.
PARTICIPATING RESEARCHERS:
Gabriel Michanek and Maria Pettersson
Section for Jurisprudence at Luleå University of Technology
