3.4 Energy Security Indices
3.4.1 Energy Security Dimensions and Indices
We selected the dimensions “Availability”, “Accessibility”, “Affordability”, and “Acceptability” to summarize some of the easy to assess Energy Security indicators. The same indicator might be a proxy for different dimensions. Depending on the major energy sources and uses in a country, different indicators and indices can be used to evaluate each dimension. You can download the key information about indices, formulas, and data sources as PDF.
Although the concept of APERC (2007) to measure Energy Security was missing relevant aspects, the unaddressed factors can be integrated within the “4 As”. In the following, we integrate environmental sustainability in the acceptability dimension, and social equity in the dimensions affordability, accessibility, and acceptability.
3.4.2 Indices for Availability (view table)
Energy Import Dependency: Energy import dependency represents net ratio of net import to total primary energy consumption (IAEA et al. 2005). High values indicate low primary energy production relative to the primary energy consumption and, therefore, a high energy import dependency of the country. Furthermore, positive values indicate that a country is a net primary energy importer; negative values that the country is net energy exporter (eg. IAEA et al. (2005) and World Energy Council (2020)).
Resources-to production ratio: The resources-to production ratio is the ratio of the energy resources remaining at the end of a year over the production of energy in that year. It evaluates lifetime of proven energy resources.
“The purpose of this indicator is to measure the availability of national energy resources concerning corresponding fuel production. Resources are generally defined as concentrations of naturally occurring solid, liquid or gaseous material in or on the Earth’s crust in a form that makes economic extraction potentially feasible. Total resources include reserves and hypothetical and speculative undiscovered resources. This indicator considers fuels such as oil, natural gas, coal and uranium. It provides a relative measure of the length of time that resources would last if production were to continue at current levels.” (IAEA et al. 2005). Resources or reserves to production ratios are also applied by Gupta (2008).
3.4.3 Indices for Accessibility (view table)
The Electrification ratio: is a widely applied indicator for energy security (e.g., Shah et al. (2019), World Energy Council (2020)) and indicates the percentage of people of a country with access to electricity. It addresses the access to electricity and so the security of the electricity supply as part of the overall energy security. Information on the electrification ratio of almost all countries of the world is provided by IEA (2019) and The World Bank (2017).
Diversity in total primary energy supply: High diversity in energy supply sources makes the national system more resilient regarding price instabilities, resource availabilities and delivery conditions of single energy sources (Shah et al., 2019). It is recommended as a long-term strategy to increase energy security (Jansen et al., 2004) and is applied, e.g., by Vithayasrichareon et al. (2012) and the Energy Trilemma Index (Global Energy Council, 2020). It can be measured using the Shannon-Wiener Index (Shannon, 1948; Jansen et al. 2004). High values indicate high levels of diversity in total energy supply.
Energy consumption per capita: Energy consumption per capita shows direct correlations with the UN Human Development Index (Martínez and Ebenhack, 2008). Further, it can be argued that high energy consumption per capita indicates low physical, economic and social barriers for accessing energy.
3.4.4 Indices for Affordability (view table)
Energy Prices: Energy prices are quantitative values for the total cost for heat, mobility, and electricity and, therefore, direct indicator for affordability. They include prices for electricity, diesel, gasoline, natural gas, kerosene, charcoal, paraffin and heating oil.
Literature Sources: Electricity prices, natural gas prices, gasoline and diesel prices are part of the energy trilemma index in the dimension energy equity, respectively, the subdimension energy affordability (World Energy Council 2020).
Data Sources: IEA (2020) provides an overview of the energy price data. GlobalPetrolPrices.com (2020) provides prices for gasoline, diesel, liquified petroleum gas, electricity, gas and other energy carriers for up to 150 countries. While the insight in single values is for free, the download of price times series is quite expensive (e.g., 2800 € for electricity price times series worldwide).
Share of household income spent on fuel and electricity: The share of household income spent on fuel puts the household income spent on fuel and electricity in relation to the household income (IAEA et al. 2005; Winkler et al. 2011). High values indicate low affordability of energy services for the people. To underline the situation for the poorest population of the country, the indicator can also be calculated, e.g., for the poorest quartile (ofgem 2018) of the population.
Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE): The LCOE provides a comparison of electricity costs across sources by taking the full life-cycle cost into account (capital expenditure, operational expenditure, renaturation) (Aldersey-Williams and Rubert 2019; Ritchie and Roser 2018). It is calculated by dividing the full life-cycle cost through the total electricity produced over the life-cycle. Together with the information of the, e.g., the household income or national GDP, the average total cost per unit of electricity let us draw a conclusion on the affordability of energy infrastructures from the local to the national scale.
3.4.5 Indices for Acceptability (view table)
Share of renewables of final energy consumption: The renewable share is expressed as share in final energy consumption (SDG 7.2 and IEA (2020)). Alternatively, the renewable share in electricity can be calculated and used as an index. A high renewable share has multiple benefits in the scope of energy security (Wang et al. 2018; Viviescas et al. 2019). If a high diversity among the renewables used, it can increase the primary energy supply diversity. Furthermore, the rather decentral and national origin of the energy sources can decrease the import dependency and therefore increase energy security in the availability and accessibility dimension.
Here, the renewable share is listed as a measure for the acceptability dimension of energy security (Institute of Energy Economics 2007). The human-induced global warming requires the reduction of CO2 emissions. World’s societies therefore demand a lower carbon intensity of the energy systems. Policies translate that demand for example into CO2-taxes hindering fossil energy production. The application of renewable energy technologies are a good choice for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of the national energy system, as CO2 is only emitted while component production, but not in the operation and energy production phase.
CO2 Intensity of energy mix: The carbon intensity of the energy mix allows the evaluation of the acceptability of the energy system concerning climate change. It is calculated as “Total carbon emission by energy production” in, e.g., tons of CO2 equivalent over “total electricity production.”
Low values indicate high acceptability of the energy system regarding climate change mitigation. The carbon intensity can also be reduced to a high deployment of nuclear power (no CO2 emission during energy production). Due to the risk of a total meltdown and the problem of the end-storage of nuclear waste, the technology faces other acceptability issues.
Death rates from energy production: Energy production technologies lead to a respective value of deaths due to accidents and pollution (Ritchie and Roser 2018). We argue that a high death rate of the national energy mix leads to low acceptability of the public regarding the national energy system.
References
3.4.1 Energy Security Dimensions and Indices
APERC, 2007. A Quest for Energy Security in the 21st Century: Resources and Constraints. https://aperc.or.jp/file/2010/9/26/APERC_2007_A_Quest_for_Energy_Security.pdf
Cherp, A., & Jewell, J. (2014). The concept of energy security: Beyond the four As. Energy Policy, 75, 415–421. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2014.09.005
3.4.2 Indices for Availability
BGR (2019): Energy Study 2019. Data and Developments Concerning German and Global, http://www.bgr.bund.de/EN/Themen/Energie/Produkte/energy_study_2019_summary_en.html?nn=15Energy Supplies. Summary. Available online at https://0.0.187.234/, checked on 8/6/2020.
Erahman, Qodri Febrilian; Purwanto, Widodo Wahyu; Sudibandriyo, Mahmud; Hidayatno, Akhmad (2016): An assessment of Indonesia’s energy security index and comparison with seventy countries. In Energy 111, pp. 364–376. DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.05.100.
IAEA, UNDESA, IEA, Eurostat and EEA (2005) Energy Indicators for Sustainable Development. Guidelines and Methodologies, Vienna. https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1222_web.pdf (Accessed 15 July 2020).
IEA (2020) ‘Data and statistics: Explore energy data by category, indicator, country, or region’. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics.
World Bank (2017) ‘Access to electricity (% of population)’. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS
3.4.3 Indices for Accessibility
IAEA, UNDESA, IEA, Eurostat and EEA (2005) Energy Indicators for Sustainable Development. Guidelines and Methodologies, Vienna. https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1222_web.pdf
EA (2020) ‘Data and statistics: Explore energy data by category, indicator, country, or region’. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics.
Jansen, J., Van, W. and Boots, A. (2004) ‘Designing Indicators of Long-term Energy Supply Security’.
Martínez, D.M. and Ebenhack, B.W. (2008) ‘Understanding the role of energy consumption in human development through the use of saturation phenomena’, Energy Policy, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp.1430–1435.
Shah, S.A.A., Zhou, P., Walasai, G. D., & Mohsin, M. (2019). Energy security and environmental sustainability index of South Asian countries: A composite index approach. Ecological Indicators, 106, 105507. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2019.105507
World Bank (2017) ‘Access to electricity (% of population)’. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS.
World Energy Council (2020): World Energy Trilemma Index 2020. With assistance of Oliver Wyman. Available online at: https://trilemma.worldenergy.org/reports/main/2020/World%20Energy%20Trilemma%20Index%202020.pdf.
3.4.4 Indices for Affordability
Aldersey-Williams, J.; Rubert, T. (2019): Levelised cost of energy – A theoretical justification and critical assessment. In Energy Policy 124, pp. 169–179. DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2018.10.004.
Bacon, Robert; Bhattacharya, Soma; Kojima, Masami (2010): Expenditure of Low-Income Households on Energy. Evidence from Africa and Asia. World Bank. Available online at https://www.cleancookingalliance.org/resources_files/expenditure-of-low-income.pdf.
GlobalPetrolPrices (2020): Retail Energy Price Data. Available online at http://globalpetrolprices.com/, checked on 7/21/2020.
IAEA, UNDESA, IEA, Eurostat and EEA (2005) Energy Indicators for Sustainable Development. Guidelines and Methodologies, Vienna. https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1222_web.pdf (Accessed 15 July 2020).
IEA (2020): Energy Prices. High-quality data on end-use energy prices. Available online at https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-prices-2020.
ofgem (2018): Energy spend as percentage of total household expenditure (UK). Available online at https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/energy-spend-percentage-total-household-expenditure-uk.
Ritchie, Hannah; Roser, Max (2018): Access to Energy. “http://ourworldindata.org/. Available online at https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#citation
Winkler, H. A. F. Simões, E. L. La Rovere, M. Alam, A. Rahman and S. Mwakasonda, World Development, 2011, 39, 1037–1050, https://www.cleancookingalliance.org/resources_files/expenditure-of-low-income.pdf.
3.4.5 Indices for Acceptability
Enerdata (2020): Global Energy Statistical Yearbook. Available online at https://yearbook.enerdata.net/
IEA (2020) ‘Data and statistics: Explore energy data by category, indicator, country, or region’. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics.
Ritchie, Hannah; Roser, Max (2018): Access to Energy. “http://ourworldindata.org/. Available online at https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#citation
Sovacool, Benjamin K.; Andersen, R.; Sorensen, Steven; Sorensen, Kenneth; Tienda, Victor; Vainorius, Arturas et al. (2016): Balancing safety with sustainability: assessing the risk of accidents for modern low-carbon energy systems. In Journal of Cleaner Production 112, pp. 3952–3965. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.07.059.