The Impact of the Past: Central and Eastern European Legacies and Their Influence on Energy Transition

Two dimensions have dominated the development of energy policy at the EU level – liberalisation and energy security. Central and Eastern European countries in particular have focused primarily on the latter issue. On the other hand, climate policy has never been an important topic for these countries. In cases when this issue was of importance, it was connected to these countries’ critical stance. However, energy and climate policies are very closely connected when it comes to energy transition – i.e. long-term change of energy systems. The main research question of this paper is what are the historical legacies that influence energy transition of Central and Eastern European countries. The research is based on the assumption that there are two mutually interwoven types of historical legacies that prevent these countries from expediting the process of energy transition: long-term reliance on fossil fuels on the one hand, and nuclear energy on the other. Together, these two legacies are causing a lock-in situation that prevents Central and Eastern European countries from utilising renewable energy sources more intensively. In order to analyse these the proposed research will apply historical institutionalism, which was argued to be especially suitable for this type of research. Path dependency, which claims that current policies are influenced by past decisions, is a major concept of this approach. In the area of energy policy this concept is included into “socio technical regimes” that are used to explain the lock-in of energy systems and their difficult transformation.