Redundancy in Multilevel Energy Governance: Why (and when) Regulatory Overlap Can be Valuable

The realization of the European Union’s climate change and energy goals is said to require a shift towards a sustainable, competitive as well as secure energy system. This shift entails considerable uncertainties as regards the behaviour of the multitude of actors involved, which are exacerbated by the unpredictability of the decisions of regulators. Moreover, this unpredictability is increased by the proliferation of regulators at various levels of the system, resulting in duplications or overlaps in regulatory governance. Such redundancies are usually considered inefficient. A level of redundancy in regulators and the rules they enact and enforce may, however, be required in order for the multilevel system of regulatory governance to operate effectively and legitimately. While overlap and duplication in principle provide for an alternative way through which EU goals can be achieved, it is not clear if and how one can analyse and design redundant regulatory systems in practice. Much of the existing work on redundancy is theoretical and abstracted from the subject matter of regulation, while also neglecting the strategic behaviour of regulators as well as companies and consumers triggered by redundancy. In this paper, the question is asked under which conditions redundancies in regulatory governance can help to make experimentation with new roles, responsibilities and relationships easier and, ultimately, the shift towards a sustainable, competitive and secure energy system more attractive. By identifying such conditions, the research seeks to make a contribution to our knowledge about the development and functioning of novel institutional arrangements for multilevel regulatory governance.