The redesign of electricity markets under EU influence:The capacity mechanism in France and Britain

International audienceThe liberalisation of the electricity sector in Europe has led to a decentralisation of investment decisions to economic actors. A key assumption behind this was that investors make their decisions based on price signals. Ensuring that there is adequate generation capacity in place to meet demand therefore became a function of the market, rather than a central planning authority. Nevertheless, in many countries, the risk of supply failure has led to the implementation of an addition to power markets known as the capacity mechanism. This chapter explains how this market reform was implemented in the UK and France, the political motivations behind it, the mobilisation of economic expertise and the process of validation by the European authorities. It highlights the increasing role of State Aid control in the framing of national regulations, defining the standard for electricity market organisation and conditions for legitimate deviation from the standard

Energy innovation and the sustainability transition

The development and subsequent deployment of new energy technologies lies at the heart of energy system change, however a sustainable energy system transition demands much more than technological innovation. Transformational change across a myriad of social and technical dimensions, including policy, markets, culture, science and user preferences, are all required. It is these inter-connected domains that shape the way in which we satisfy consumers’ energy needs, such as warmth, light and mobility. Energy system change is highly complex and unpredictable given how these different dimensions co-evolve, simultaneously shaping and being shaped by one another. This can result in positive feedbacks between these system dimensions that ‘lock-in’ the existing fossil fuel based energy system and in turn ‘lock-out’ more environmentally-friendly alternatives. In this context this chapter employs a system-level perspective on energy innovation and transitions (see definitions in Box 9.1 below), where transformative change depends on a coordinated and long-term approach that treats the energy system as an interconnected, nested ‘whole’. To achieve this end there is a need for a suite of conceptual tools that offer insights into how and why energy system change is unfolding

Grand visions and pragmatic integration:Exploring the evolution of Europe’s electricity regime

In this paper we develop a socio-technical analysis of the European electricity system. We show that the relationship between high-level grand visions of an integrated European system and more pragmatic bottom-up processes of electricity system development have been a feature of the European regime for coordinating cross-border electricity flows since the 1920s. Following a period when radically different visions of a European system were proposed, the nation-state emerged as the key site of system building and constituted the core of the technological and institutional configuration. However, European grand visions persisted and this led to the creation of various forms of transnational collaboration and coordination. We discuss whether this inherited technological and institutional configuration is compatible with the contemporary desire for a European low-carbon transition and we emphasise the need for more detailed analysis of socio-technical regimes and their dynamics to inform policy and enrich transitions theory