Terese Birkeland

• Birkeland , Terese & Trondal, Jarle (2022). The rift between executive contraction and executive detraction: the case of European Commission battery policy-making. Journal of European Public Policy. ISSN 1350-1763. p. 1–23. doi: 10.1080/13501763.2022.2118356. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Providing policy solutions to solve across border societal challenges in Europe, such as electrifying the transport sector by facilitating a European battery industry, call for increased coordination among policy-makers. This article offers a novel study of the formulation of the European Commission’s (Commission’s) battery regulation proposal. In doing so, the paper makes two distinct contributions to extant literature: Theoretically, it outlines two conceptual models of executive governance – that of the Commission as a contracted and a detracted institution – and offers an institutional-organizational approach to account for conditions under which each of these models is likely to unfold. Empirically, the paper offers a case study of the process of drafting the Commission’s battery regulation proposal. Benefiting from semi-structured interviews, the study reveals patterns of executive contraction and detraction in the Commission. Whereas extant literature picture the Commission as an increasingly centralized and contracted executive institution, this study finds that executive contraction and detraction tend to co-evolve and co-exist.

• Birkeland , Terese; Gänzle, Stefan & Torjesen, Stina (2021). The Making of a European Union Strategy for Central Asia: Towards 'Normalization' in Foreign Policy? European Foreign Affairs Review. ISSN 1384-6299. 26(3), p. 377–396. doi: 10.54648/EERR2021033.

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• Lopez, Fernando; Billy, Romain Guillaume; Müller, Daniel Beat; Birkeland , Terese & Torjesen, Stina (2022). Towards an EU Battery Regulation 2.0?
• Billy, Romain Guillaume; Birkeland , Terese; Müller, Daniel Beat; Lopez, Fernando & Torjesen, Stina (2022). Reducing the carbon footprint of battery materials - a case of problem shifting?
• Billy, Romain Guillaume; Birkeland , Terese; Müller, Daniel Beat; Lopez, Fernando & Torjesen, Stina (2022). Lithium in the EV battery expansion: How bad is the supply constraint?
• Fässler, Bernhard & Birkeland , Terese (2021). Research and regulatory obstacles for stationary second use battery energy storage systems. Show summary

  The global demand for electricity is rising due to the increased electrification of multiple sectors of economic activity and an increased focus on sustainable consumption. Simultaneously, the share of cleaner electricity generated by transient, renewable sources such as wind and solar energy is increasing. This has made additional buffer capacities for electrical grids necessary. Battery energy storage systems have been investigated as storage solutions due to their responsiveness, efficiency, and scalability. Storage systems based on the second use of discarded electric vehicle batteries have been identified as cost-efficient and sustainable alternatives to first use battery storage systems. Large quantities of such batteries with a variety of capacities and chemistries are expected to be available in the future, as electric vehicles are more widely adopted. These batteries usually still possess about 80% of their initial capacity and can be used in storage solutions for high-energy as well as high-power applications, and even hybrid solutions encompassing both. The presentation will highlight potential applications for second use battery energy storage systems making use of decommissioned electric vehicle batteries. It shows ongoing research on second use battery energy storage systems within Europe and compares it to activities outside of Europe. The presentation will also identify economic, environmental, technological, and regulatory obstacles to the incorporation of repurposed batteries in second use battery energy storage systems and lists the developments needed to allow their future uptake. Especially regulatory obstacles need to be overcome. This will be addressed through assessing implications of EU battery legislation. In December 2020, the European Commission put forth their proposal for a battery regulation. The regulation proposal both updates the targets from the battery directive from 2006 in addition to regulating the upstream part of the battery value chain. In other words, the Commission seeks to regulate the entire battery value chain with this being proposed as the first product-specific regulation under the European Green Deal and Circular Economy Action Plan. Potential impacts this regulation proposal will have on the market for reuse, second life and recycling of batteries in Europe will be discussed.

• Birkeland, Terese & Torjesen, Stina (2020). Batteriverdikjeden, Prosess 21 ekspertnotat.

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