The Energy Sector and Socio-Ecological Transformation: Europa in the Global Context

Abstract

Global climate change politics is moving ahead, while policy effectiveness lags behind. The overwhelmingly capitalogenic climate change (Moore 2015; Street 2016) necessitates a global ecosocialist transformation (Yurchenko 2020). In many ways, the EU is a champion of green politics and policy, although its decarbonisation framework has been criticised for being ill-conceived, ill-prescribed and insufficient, especially in the context of internationalised production and consumption of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. A radically socio-ecological transformation of ’global’ Europe, and the decarbonisation of the EU energy sector as a complex socio-ecological system are needed (SES; Ostrom 2012). Focusing on some 20 years of EU energy market reforms, I argue that decarbonisation aims are jeopardised without (1) public national, local and collective forms of ownership and financing of energy (generation and supply) as a common pool resource (CPR)/commons, and (2) a polycentric mode of governance (Ostrom 2010).