| dc.description.abstract | A renewable energy transition may take different forms. It could, among other possibilities, follow a decentralized pathway where renewable energy is produced on a distributed manner which inherently leads to intermittency issues and double-flow interaction with the electricity distribution grids. This infers great technical challenges that require a variety of appropriate policies and instruments touching upon production units, grid management and storage facilities. Moreover, a decentralized renewable energy transition inherently allows for citizen to become active in the energy system. Becoming prosumers or members of citizen cooperatives, they may then beneficiate from a plethora of advantages while regaining control and ownership over the system. As the entire energy paradigm changes, incumbent actors who historically dominated the system may then suffer from losses. Drawing from these insights, this research aims at shedding light on whose interests, among those of incumbent and new energy actors, are represented in the policy-outputs that affect the renewable energy transition pathway of Wallonia. Doing so the special interests of incumbent and new energy actors in Wallonia were explored, regarding technical, ownership and benefits distribution preferences. Five different policies were then analyzed so as to uncover which of these interests were encompassed. We touched upon the end of subsidies, regulatory framework that supports wind power development, smart metering and collective-consumption legislation inputs that concern flexibility and finally a prosumer tarification. On that account, the results showed that incumbent actors’ interests reflected in the policy-outputs whereas new actors’ interests barely did so. This influence did not act upon the technical development of the system as this will occur regardless of the actors’ will. Nevertheless, they did act upon the ownership, control and benefits components. Finally, it was argued that the reason why the policy-outputs showed to be inclusive of incumbent actors is that policy-makers genuinely believed their pragmatic, financial and skills characteristics to be more efficient regarding a desirable societal transition whereas prosumers and cooperatives failed to prove added-value to the common good. | eng |