The TGL project was initiated in accordance with the "Energy Union Package," one of the ten priorities of the European Commission for 2014-19, the "Energy and Climate Union" based on three pillars:
- A strategic framework detailing the objectives of the energy union and the concrete steps to be taken to achieve them.
- An EU vision for the global agreement on climate change was adopted in Paris in 2015.
- A plan to achieve the 10% electricity interconnection target by 2020.
This priority is based on both the urgency of organizing a response to climate change and the need to undertake a transition to a low-carbon, secure and competitive economy, with targets to be met by 2030.
The primary responsibility for implementing the transition process rests with the states. Since many states have adopted climate and energy laws and regulations, can people count on their willingness to take action in this specific matter? Is it enough to rely on the government today to make the transition work? Can people count on their voluntarism and consider that by adopting these legal instruments, they have effectively set in motion the energy transition process?
This is where non-state actors come into play, as they have become an effective countervailing power—real checks and balances—in certain cases where political contingencies do not allow parliament or the courts to control government action.
From then on, the general question is indeed: what is the general role of social actors in the transition, notably the state, non-state actors, and individuals?
Then, the fundamental question becomes: what specific role can non-state actors play in such a major social process?
It is within this framework that the TGL project was set up to study the problem of the energy transition, from the perspective of governance in law and political science, which allows for a specific focus on the role that the central actor in modern society, referred to as “non-state actor” (NGOs, associations, groups, trade unions, individuals, etc.,) inevitably plays in all current major social transformations. In other words, the TGL project studies the legal and political implications of the energy transition from a double point of view, on the one hand, as a social process framed by law and, on the other, as a social process through which non-state actors have a specific role to play.
This study is important because it allows us to examine how laws are framing with new tools a problem that goes way back to the industrial revolution. Above all, how laws are opening up avenues of action to non-state actors, who are truly operating as countervailing powers in the field of climate protection. In other words, the role of non-state actors in the energy transition is leading to the emergence of ecological democracy, through various judicial actions—besides lobbying—that concern both climate and energy. This democracy becomes important in a context where mistrust in institutions is becoming more significant.
