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This book examines the mutual interplay of climate and energy policies in eleven Central and Eastern European countries in the context of the EU's energy transition. Energy security has long been prioritised in the region and has shaped not only national climate and energy policy, but also EU-level policy-making and implementation. Whilst the region shares economic, institutional and historical energy supplier commonalities it is not homogenous, and the book considers the significant differences between the preferences and policies of these member states. Chapters also explore the effect of the EU on member states that have joined since 2004 and their influence on the EU's energy and climate policies and their role in highlighting the importance of the concepts of security and solidarity. The book highlights the challenges to, and drivers of, energy transitions in the region and compares these with those in global energy transitions.
This chapter looks at the process of restructuring of energy governance in CEE countries, focusing on common patterns and differences in terms of market opening, competition and patterns of ownership. Here it maps efforts towards the liberalisation of the energy sector and explains the enduring variation in political and economic institutions across countries. The challenge of liberalising energy markets while ensuring energy security is discussed in more detail, looking in particular at the implications for the complicated relationship with Russia. Finally, the chapter asks to what extent this restructuring, however incomplete, has permitted an opening of the structure of energy governance to new actors.
Energy supply security has been a crucial energy policy issue for CEE countries at least since the natural gas supply disruptions of 2006 and 2009. This book argues that energy security plays a generally more important role within the CEE region than issues related to climate change. However, this chapter evaluates the interplay between ideas, institutions and the material nature of energy systems in the development of energy policy. In doing so it also highlights the social construction of energy security, demonstrating that energy security is not self-evident or correlated within the CEE region with dependency on energy imports from Russia. Individual CEE countries perceive energy supplies as a security issue to a different extent, identifying the source and extent of insecurity or risk differently, and supporting different policy responses as a result. While some countries, for example, Hungary or Bulgaria, have tended to perceive Russian energy as a means to guarantee energy security, others – most notably, Lithuania and Poland – consider energy security to be one of their main policy issues and imports of Russian energy as one of the main threats to this.
This chapter focuses on the specific role of social movements and NGOs in energy policy-making in the CEE region. This is structured through a series of case studies that highlight contemporary energy policy issues, specifically with relation to energy pricing, issues of equity and energy poverty, nuclear energy, shale gas and renewable energy. The chapter examines how these issues are framed, justified and legitimised, and the extent of broader societal participation and support. To provide context this chapter considers the developing role of civil society in the region, including legacies of socialism, the historical and contemporary role for societal input into general policy-making, changes in state-civil society relations and the development of NGOs and interest groups and their influence on climate and energy policy. It studies these issues in four sub-sections: energy poverty, the shale gas debate and the role of opposition on environmental grounds, nuclear energy and public participation, and local and community energy initiatives.
This chapter focuses on a general overview of the development of energy and climate policy within EU and CEE and thus provides basis for further discussion on the trade-off between these two policies within the book. It outlines the energy and climate objectives of the region and the EU, and policies developed to achieve these, as well as trends and statistics demonstrating progress towards these. As both policies are crucial for the transition towards a decarbonised economy, this empirical chapter paves the way for further analysis in the book and provides a general overview of the situation within the EU and the CEE region whilst embedding them in the context of global energy transitions.
This chapter presents the conceptual framework of the book that builds upon several strands of literature: socio-technical systems, institutional and political change, and securitisation. Drawn from existing literature the authors argue that several key factors account for national climate and energy policies, and explain the extent of the region’s climate and energy policy homogeneity and heterogeneity. Such an approach enables the book to identify the differences between individual CEE countries – for instance, the role of ideas can be used to describe the different understandings of what constitutes energy security issues, and the solutions to these. Some but certainly not all countries in the region securitise this issue (e.g., Lithuania and Poland) and frame energy security as a national security challenge, highlighting the foreign policy implications of climate and energy policy and influencing both domestic and EU policy choices.
The conclusion discusses the main findings of the book embedded in the latest developments related to the Covid-19 pandemic and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It discusses the two main arguments presented in the book, provides detailed answers to research questions of the monographs and presents avenues for further research.
Within this chapter the book goes beyond the discussion on the region and EU and provides an examination of how specific positions of CEE countries towards energy and climate policy fit within global energy transitions. It highlights the ability of regional experience to provide insights into global energy transition challenges, and the lessons the region can offer for discussions about how to approach the pathways towards carbon-neutral economies; many challenges of CEE countries are shared internationally. As the region has to adapt to EU climate and energy policies, but is at the same time able to shape these, it provides insights into the process of developing and implementing decarbonisation policy. Our analysis of how EU enlargement has shaped mid- and long-term EU climate and energy policy is a contribution to understanding the EU’s role as an international actor.
This chapter focuses on the impact of CEE countries on the development of climate and energy policies at the EU level. It is argued that states in the region demonstrate some shared preferences and utilise regional groupings to promote these at the EU level. The chapter discusses the contribution of CEE countries to the development of EU policy – such as Polish efforts to create an ‘Energy NATO’, CEE countries’ efforts to improve energy security following the 2006 and 2009 gas crises, the 2014 Energy Union, and the reaction to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The chapter argues that the security dimension was given priority by CEE countries at the EU level. They contributed to placing energy security on the EU’s agenda during accession negotiations and the immediate post-accession period; however, their preferences were often not shared by older members. It was the 2006 and 2009 gas supply disruptions that shifted the focus towards energy security in the region, and at the EU level. In 2022 the EU’s dependency on and vulnerability to high levels of energy imports from Russia were brought into sharp focus.
This book explores how the EU has attempted to balance its energy security objectives in the twenty-first century, to achieve security of supply, reasonable prices and ambitious climate goals. Specifically, the book focuses on how these challenges have played out in Central and Eastern Europe in the context of their accession to the EU, as members are both subject to and shape the EU’s agenda and legislative outputs. Here we introduce how general prioritisation of security of supply concerns has constrained and at times enabled energy transitions in the region, and how a consistent concern with import dependence on Russia was discursively adopted by the wider EU in the late 2000s, and as a policy goal from 2022. The introduction presents two main arguments of the book (priority of energy security of the CEE countries over climate goals and heterogeneity of the region) and its research design.