Security of electricity supply: A global assessment of national vulnerabilities

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.