James Kneebone (ETH Zürich) will hold a presentation on “A new European energy policy paradigm revealed by changes in hydrogen strategies”.
📆 Date & Time: Friday, 15.5.2026 @ 12:00 (GMT) / 13.00 (CEST)
🔗 Details & Registration: https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PanelDetails/18005
Abstract: As energy policy paradigms change, profound shifts in policy goals and instrument logics follow. Therefore, understanding when the energy policy paradigm might be changing is very important for researchers assessing energy policies. Although changes in policy paradigms are infrequent, they are more likely to occur during crises such as the 2022 energy crisis. However, most research analyses these changes through long-term, single-country studies that cannot reveal shifts in recent years, across countries, or in countries affected by supranational policies. To overcome this limitation, this article explores a new approach to identifying changes in the policy paradigm. It compares changes in policy goals, instrument logics, and targeted sectors across twenty-one strategic policy documents for hydrogen published by the European Commission and eight Member States between 2020 and 2024. Our findings indicate that European hydrogen strategies have undergone significant changes following the energy crisis. Across the EU, there is a shift toward more security policy goals, coercive instrument logics, and electricity system applications, while economic goals and incentive-based logics remain the most common. Member States and the European Commission tend to align on high-level changes, but differ on more specific aspects, such as targeted sub-sectors and international policy aspects. Overall, these changes reveal a new European energy policy paradigm that evolves from the prevailing paradigm rather than entirely rejecting it, with profound implications for European hydrogen policies and beyond.
Bio: James Kneebone is a Doctoral researcher in the Group for Sustainability and Technology at ETH Zürich. His work focuses on European hydrogen, energy, and industrial policy. Prior to this James was a Research Associate at the Florence School of Regulation (FSR), where his work covered hydrogen financing mechanisms in the EU, the issue of justice in international renewable hydrogen value chains, and security of energy supply. Before joining the FSR, James worked in DG ENER of the European Commission. James holds an MSc in International Development from Utrecht University and a BSc in Liberal Arts and Sciences from University College Maastricht.
How to join the seminar via the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) platform:
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– All seminars in the series will be automatically added to your itinerary.
– Your itinerary is available through “My Events” in “My ECPR”
– A link to join the session will appear in your itinerary 15-minutes before the start of the session
I look forward to the discussion!
Cheers Rainer
Prof. Dr. Rainer Quitzow
Research Group Lead, Geopolitics of Energy and Industrial Transformation
Forschungsinstitut für Nachhaltigkeit (RIFS) am GFZ
Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) at GFZ
Professor for Sustainability and Innovation
Technische Universität Berlin
Tel: +49 (0) 331-6264 22374
Mobil: +49 (0) 176 2293 0741
Mail: rainer.quitzow@rifs-potsdam.de
Web: www.rifs-potsdam.de
LN: Rainer Quitzow
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