Industries and Lobbies Delaying or Driving the Energy Transition – LOBBIES

The LOBBIES project aims to shed light on the strategic behavior of stakeholders affected by the energy transition, their economic motivations, the way they form coalitions and special interest groups, and the channels through which they influence public policies and international negotiations. Methodologically, it combines advanced theoretical modeling and empirical studies in economics based on a very rich original database including, among others, information from the European Transparency Register matched with information on meetings held by EC members and data from social networks, and it plans original surveys and choice experiments. Web-scraping, textual analysis, network analysis and advanced econometrics will be used to further complement and exploit this rich dataset. The project is also informed by political science and science and technology studies to develop a point of view complementary to traditional economic approaches and lean on in-depth case studies.
To understand and analyze this strategic design issue, the project features four main work packages. Those are organized around: 1) The dynamics of competition and lobbying in the energy sector; 2) Lobby group formation and functioning in the energy transition; 3) Informational lobbying and influence strategies; and 4) The impact of lobbying on European policies and international commitments.
The broad purpose is to deepen our understanding of the policy process and inform the public debate by providing quantitative evidence, which should also target a wide audience, in order to develop the most appropriate response strategies and design energy transition policies that could better accommodate the political ecosystem.
The project brings together three partners (Paris School of Economics, MINES ParisTech, the Centre d'économie de l'environnement de Montpellier and the Jean-Jacques Laffont Foundation - TSE) with international researchers, leaders in the field.