PhD in Adapative Regulatory Frameworks for the Hydrogen Economy

Are you an enthusiastic lawyer and/or public administration scholar with a curious research mind? Would you like to use your expertise to make a direct contribution to one of the major societal challenges of our time: the energy transition? Then we are looking for you!

What are you going to do?

As a PhD candidate, you will investigate how the regulation of the hydrogen economy can be designed in such a way that the law is better able to evolve alongside the economic sector and society that it seeks to regulate than is currently the case. The legal framework governing the energy transition often has a “static” character. It regulates what exists rather than what could exist. In a sector in which innovation is still developing rapidly, such as the hydrogen economy, a static legal framework can have a constraining effect on the development of the economy and society.

An adaptive legal framework can prevent this problem, but it is not yet known what such a framework should entail or which adaptive instruments can effectively support the development of the hydrogen economy rather than constrain it.

Within an ongoing research project, we are developing a theory of an adaptive legal framework for the hydrogen economy. In this project, we aim to empirically test this theoretical framework in order to determine which interpretation and application of the theory can be effective in practice. In this research, theory will be translated into verifiable hypotheses concerning governance and regulatory instruments for the hydrogen economy. These hypotheses will be tested both quantitatively, on the basis of experiments, and qualitatively, through semi-structured interviews.

In developing this research, you will become part of an interdisciplinary research team within the HySuccess programme of GroenvermogenNL, in which you will work together with colleagues from different universities and disciplines.