Accelerating Renewables Without Sacrificing Justice: Institutional Pathways to Sustainable Development in Europe

This study examines whether renewable energy project delivery across the European Union can be accelerated without weakening institutional legitimacy and procedural justice, focusing on permitting design, grid connection governance, public‐sector policy capacity and justice and participation quality as the institutional conditions that shape delivery outcomes. A balanced country‐year panel of 275 observations for 25 European Union countries during 2015–2025 is constructed from ENTSO‐E, ACER, V‐Dem and World Bank sources, and the resulting Permitting Design Index, Grid Connection Bottleneck Index, policy‐capacity measure, and Justice and Participation Quality index are analysed using fixed‐effects, dynamic‐panel system‐GMM, instrumental‐variable, bootstrap mediation and moderation models. Stronger permitting design is associated with a lower share of projects scheduled beyond 2030, and this association operates partly through grid connection governance and public‐sector policy capacity, while strengthening further where procedural justice and participation mechanisms are more developed. These patterns indicate that administrative acceleration advances climate and clean‐energy objectives only when it is embedded in capable, coordinated and legitimate institutions, which challenges the assumption that participatory safeguards necessarily slow renewable deployment. The study identifies the institutional pathways linking formal climate‐policy ambition to implementation outcomes, and the findings imply that progress towards SDGs 7 and 13 should be pursued together with the participatory and accountable institutions embodied in SDG 16, with permitting deadlines combined with transparent queue management, adequately resourced administrations and early, fair participation.