The Interplay between Liberalisation and Decarbonisation in the European Internal Energy Market

This contribution explores the interplay between liberalisation and decarbonisation of the European electricity market. The focus of this piece is to see whether liberalisation of the EU electricity market, in Europe realised by means of the unbundling regime, inherently promotes decarbonisation of the grid. In other words, it seeks to explore if decarbonisation of the electrical grid is a positive externality of liberalising the market, absent of any other policies promoting the scale up of renewables in the grid. To this end, it examines existing economic and econometric literature on the issue and places it in the greater context of internal energy market legislation and European energy policy