Jenny Palm

Circular economy (CE) policy has largely developed around product markets, where ecodesign, repairability requirements, and extended producer responsibility now form a substantial regulatory layer. In regulated energy infrastructure, where replacement decisions are shaped by depreciation schedules, regulatory review cycles, and procurement rules, these tools have made limited progress. This perspective aims to explain why, and to identify what would be required to address it. Developing a conceptual argument from the electricity sector and generalizing it to regulated network infrastructure, anddrawing on recent work on smart grid governance and the economics of infrastructure regulation, the paper distinguishes two modes through which obsolescence is produced. In product markets it is openly recognized and targeted by policy; in regulated infrastructure it is generated by institutional mechanisms whose mandates do not include lifecycle outcomes, leaving the premature replacement of functioning assets untreated as a governable issue. The paper shows that this institutional mode is structurally resistant to self-correction, and argues that bridging the gap requires defining obsolescence as an explicit governance object, with a clear institutional locus and a mandate for lifecycle outcomes, rather than extending existing CE instruments.