The growing climate change crisis requires significant development in
and implementation of sustainable and renewable energies. To bring about that
development, greater foreign direct investment is needed. Investment treaty arbitration
contributes to encouraging greater levels of foreign direct investment,
including in the context of investment in climate-friendly energies, by giving
foreign private investors that knowledge that they can have recourse to a
neutral dispute forum, which can, in turn, help shape regulatory frameworks,
resulting in attractive investment conditions for foreign private investors. In
this article, the authors argue that the European Union’s forward thinking
regulatory approach has been pivotal to the progression of a legal framework
encouraging cleaner energy and more environmentally friendly technology. Whilst
enormous benefits have been derived from this approach, the authors argue that
the European Union is at risk of overstepping the mark and of deterring, as
opposed to encouraging, the necessary foreign direct investment, through, in
part, its much-publicised aversion to investment treaty arbitration.