This research work has been developed in collaboration/partnership with the University of Florence and the Baffi Center research unit of Law and Economics.
Recently the European Union has invigorated the renewable energy sources (RES) role among the measures set to favour a low carbon emission economy. The research work endeavor is thus to sound both the economic and legal fields, with the aim to detect the present and future perspectives of RES in the EU.
The research work is structured in five parts. The first part provides a preliminary introduction on the EU legislative framework on RES and on the related issues. In this regard, since energy has an autonomous legal basis than internal market, some changes are deemed necessary to rend the RES regime compatible with internal market and competition rules. A further legislative analysis on the governance of renewable energy follows the prodromal framework on the internal market. The second part offers a broader perspective on RES, namely the one where the EU policy could encounter international law. International trade agreements could produce positive influence on decarbonizing the economy. The third part elaborates on the incentives for RES in the context of internal market. In this regard, the interplay among the different legal regimes of climate law, State aid law and international investment law requires a proper coordination to facilitate a proper energy transition. On the topic it has been analyzed specifically the Spanish case. The fourth part elaborates on the impact of renewable resources on agriculture and its traditional concept. The European Union sees at the agriculture as multifunctional, namely also as a sector ancillary to the production of biofuels. It stands still an arguably difference between agriculture and renewable energies business models, thus it is suggested to avoid the agriculture transformation into an industrial sector. Furthermore, the interplay between agriculture and energy sectors produces also a conflict between different legal interests. The fifth part focuses on the possibility offered by the RES to move the production and supplying of energy toward a horizontal economic model, transforming consumers into prosumers. In this regard the analysis is on these challenges: the potential adoption of smart metering energy supply model, the self-generation of energy for communities, the use of blockchain for RES in both trading and financing contexts.
