Europe's Moment: Designing Effective Policies in Energy Storage Technology for Renewables

The Paris Agreement is the first international accord to engage with the full-scale investment efforts required to address climate change.

Moreover, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have emerged as the global benchmark for directing investments to the clean energy sector.

And yet, neither scholarship nor practice has illuminated the combined implications of the Paris Agreement and SDGs for determining how businesses can evolve to maintain their competitiveness and fuel the energy transitions to a net-zero emissions society by the second half of the century (Article 4(1) of the Paris Agreement).

In this context, the European Union (EU) starts from a vantage point, which is an ambitious internal action plan toward decarbonization (e.g. the European Green Deal (EGD)), but policy design fails to combine Europe's external and internal obligations to support decarbonization technology.

This project focuses on one of the most important areas for decarbonization policies, Energy Storage Technology (EST) for renewable energy, to propose a refined regulatory framework to fulfill the EU's external and internal commitments in climate policy.

The project investigates how sustainable investment in renewable energy storage can be fostered through effective policy design that includes prosumers (energy-producing consumers), starting in the EU.

Empowering and coordinating prosumers and businesses through effective policy design is one of the most promising strategies for the EU to achieve its vision of a citizen-oriented energy future and 100% renewable energy system by 2050.

The multidisciplinary nature of the project is strong, involving policy design, EU and international law and sustainable finance.

It includes a two-way transfer of knowledge and the training of the candidate in advanced techniques in energy and climate economics.

In line with the EGD, the proposed policy is poised to increase EU competitiveness in EST for renewable energy, and results are transferrable.