ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the potential impact of international trade law on efforts to promote green energy policies. It focuses on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and its General Agreements on Trade in Services (GATS). The chapter shows that there are foreseeable risks from these legal frameworks that could lead to frustration in implementing green energy policies. The GATS’s rules apply to services rendered by a party in one member to a customer in another member. It supports the efforts of members to create and enter into agreements of economic integration; such economic integration agreements both provide substantial sectorial coverage and provide for the absence or elimination of trade discrimination. International trade regimes, as exemplified by the WTO, strive to enable idealized conditions for trade: free transit of goods and services, tariff-free marketing, and the absence of market discrimination.
