Abstract:
Ensuring supply security constitutes a dual normative task for both ruling party policy and national legislation. The shift in energy regulation from authority-dominance to a hybrid model combining coercion and guidance creates normative opportunities for soft-law incentives to achieve supply security through market mechanisms. Energy law exhibits a dual nature as both policy-oriented legislation and sector-specific law transcending traditional departmental boundaries. Within this soft-law-and-hard-law integrated regulatory system, energy law falls into three categories: hard energy law, soft energy law, and customary energy law. Energy markets serve as the operational arena where soft-law mechanisms foster voluntary compliance and supply diversification, making market-based supply security implementation the functional pathway for soft-law incentivization. The hard energy law dominated regulatory paradigm faces challenges regarding the principle of proportionality, demonstrating limited capacity to address emerging industries or adapt to market dynamics, while potentially suppressing stakeholder autonomy through neglect of legitimate interests. Hard-law regulation proves unsuitable for specific supply practices, with inherent tensions between its coercive elements and market incentive requirements. Soft-law’s incentivizing efficacy stems from its anticipatory nature and persuasive force. Guided by the effectiveness logic of “deliberation-persuasion-consensus-volition” and soft-law’s normative alignment with supply security institutionalization, a layered regulatory framework prioritizing soft-law instruments with hard-law safeguards should be established to enhance supply initiatives and ensure systemic resilience.