Vulnerabilities of electricity systems are increasingly at the heart of energy security concerns. Adequate supply of electricity can be threatened by disruption of supply of imported fuels used in power generation, failures of infrastructure, rapid growth of demand, lack of generation capacity or a number of other diverse and often unpredictable factors. This thesis aims to quantitatively and systematically evaluate security of national electricity supply worldwide. It presents a framework for evaluating sovereignty (dependency on foreign actors), robustness (related to risks from predictable and probable factors) and resilience (related to risks from unpredictable and currently unknown events) of electricity systems. 

The results of this evaluation conducted for over 200 countries present a picture of the world where many nations suffer from one or multiple vulnerabilities of their electricity systems. High income countries normally have more reliable, resilient and robust electricity systems. However, these countries often depend on imported fuels. Many low income countries also rely on imported sources of energy for electricity generation, but they are much more significantly affected by frequent and persistent power outages, inadequate generation capacities, high losses and inefficiencies, and low diversity of electricity production options. The thesis demonstrates that improvements of electricity systems, especially in low-income countries may significantly enhance their energy security. At the same time policy priorities for building up national electricity systems vary from one country to another. 

Energy security is a key driver of energy policies in most countries. Security of electricity supply is increasingly considered a central part of energy security. This study focuses on two key areas of electricity security: diversity and aging of power plants. It is an analysis with global coverage with aggregation of data at the level of individual countries.

This thesis uses the more advanced ‘triple concept’ approach  to measuring diversity of fuels in the power sector which includes the ‘distance’ between the types of fuels as well as the number of types and the evenness of spread between them. It also analyses the physical diversity of power plants. This study also assesses the aging of power plants in a new and novel way, using a specifically developed Aging Index.

Key results of this study are the use of a ‘triple concept’ has the potential to significantly alter results and as such future diversity analyses should use such indices. Relating to diversity, 60% of countries analysed (145) have vulnerability. They account for a total population of about 750 million people. There are some clear relationships between diversity profile of countries and World Bank development status; in general, countries with development status HI or UMI are significantly more diverse, having better fuel and power plant diversity. Relating to aging of power plants, 85 countries with a total population of 1.4 billion are considered highly vulnerable. A further 78 countries with a total population of 3.8 billion are considered vulnerable.

This study explores the energy security implications of possible development pathways of the transport sector. It proposes a framework to systemically assess energy security in the transport sector and the national/regional energy security in China, India, Japan, USA and the EU in nine scenarios of short-term future. The main findings are as follows. First, energy security of the transport sector is closely related to national energy security, but this relation is complex. The rapid growth of energy demand in the transport sector prominently affects national energy security. But for industrialized countries where efficiency gains in the transport sector have mostly been exhausted, suppressing the transport sector does not produce apparent contribution to national energy security. Diversity in the transport sector is also closely related to overall diversity. Import dependence of the transport sector seriously affects overall import dependency of industrialized countries. To reduce import dependence, industrialized countries benefit the most from supply-side approaches, such as diversification of primary energy sources, while developing countries benefit the most from the efficiency improvement. Secondly, in the short-term, different development scenarios result in trade-offs between reducing import dependency and controlling demand growth. Thirdly, the climate neutral scenario and the Mix scenarios (which emphasis diversity in policy choices) are the most energy secure scenarios in the analysis. Important factors in improving energy security in both the transport sector and national energy systems include ensuring flexibility of policy choices and balance between supply-side and demand-side interventions, and promotion of technological development in the transport sector.