National progress towards supranational climate & energy goals due to policies & their mixes? Insights from Northern & Western Europe.

The European Union's climate strategy obliges its Member States to fulfil common Climate and Energy Targets by 2030 while the Member States are free in their choice of mixes among polices and instruments providing rule-, economic-and information-focussed incentives. This paper comparatively firstly calculates in how far 11 Member States have already progressed towards these targets, based on the goals set in the National Climate and Energy Plans. Secondly, the paper quantitatively investigates in how far there is a relationship between this progress and the use of different policy-mixes of the countries.