Penghui Fan

Project title: Energy transition narratives for the European Green Deal
 
The European Green Deal mandates a swift and fair energy transition, but there are different possible pathways for decarbonizing national and EU energy systems. The “Fit for 55" package outlines proposed policies for reaching this goal, which will be the subject of negotiations among national and EU policymakers over the next few years.
 
The aim of this project is to identify the main narratives used by policymakers for a specific policy issue relating to the “Fit for 55" package and the European Green Deal. For this purpose, I will use discourse analysis or a similar qualitative research approach, possibly applying the Narrative Policy Framework as an interpretation tool. The NLP will integrate with the narrative policy framework to analyze the policies about the energy transition. The data will consist of archival data such as media reports, press releases, speech transcripts, position papers, official policy reports or even Twitter posts and possibly primary data from interviews with policymakers.  In addition, it is also possible to characterize the resulting narratives based on their position in the political spectrum. In the end, the project will reveal the main stories told by policymakers when arguing for or against a certain reform, thus creating a holistic representation of a nuanced policy issue and shedding light on the appraisal of complexities and uncertainties regarding the energy transition.
 
The research can be helpful for the energy transition lab especially for the topic "Capturing behavior in the energy transition", which also focuses on the behavior analysis for different actors in the complex system of energy transition. From the text analysis by NLP, the behaviors of stakeholders, including the interested group, the policy makers, the opponent parties, and the victims, can be analyzed effectively, which can be helpful for the policy makers.