As countries grow and develop, one of their biggest challenges is establishing ways to maintain growth. This means constantly improving and remodeling the global energy system. In order to assess these global challenges, the World Economic Forum has developed the New Energy Architecture Initiative. In a world where all types of boundaries are slowly fading away, it has never been so imperative to understand the changes that are part of our everyday lives. Countries' individual energy architectures have different demands and that, along with the omnipresent dilemmas of economic growth versus environmental sustainability versus energy access, encompasses the center of this analysis.
The pillar of this work is the Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report (EAPI). The EAPI is a tool that was created to help countries monitor their work and progress through a series of indicators. The New Energy Architecture Project also focuses on different regions of the world and economic clusters such as the BRICS so as to evaluate the effect of cross-national factors on a country's energy system.
The Energy Architecture Initiative seeks to serve as a source of information, providing understanding of the phenomena that countries are currently facing, in order to foster a smooth transition of the current global energy structure. This year’s report, like earlier editions, looks at what a future energy structure could look like.
There is a pressing need to secure a sustainable future, especially taking into account the more than one billion people around the world who do not have reliable access to energy and the continued growth and industrialization that is shaping global energy markets. In such a context, it is no easy task to develop a structure that delivers a secure, environmentally sustainable, and affordable energy supply. In fact, as the report shows, all countries, despite having different performances, all have one thing in common: none of them are 100 percent prepared to face the upcoming challenges. Furthermore, they all struggle to find balance within the energy triangle: economic growth and development, environmental sustainability, energy access and security.
Obviously as countries each have varied natural resources, they are all pursuing energy development in different ways. At this point, finding a balance within the triangle while seeking economic growth is almost an oxymoron. In fact, countries often set aside environmental issues in order to focus on economic growth. However, as climate change is increasingly recognized as one of the world’s biggest threats, nobody can afford to ignore this imbalance. Unfortunately, as more companies put on a front of being more environmentally sustainable, many consumers fail to see the long-term impact.
The overriding goals of security, affordability, and sustainability require governments to use a new set of strategic tools in order to overcome conflicting spheres. These tools must to provide information and analysis that will improve the balance between policy objectives. The EAPI uses a set of indicators to assess and rank the energy architectures of 124 countries, placing emphasis on how each country performs across spheres of the energy triangle. The indicators show if a country's energy structure adds or detracts from the economy, the environmental impact of supply and consumption, and how safe and accessible and diversified the energy supply is.
In developing their responses to creating new energy architectures, individual countries and groups and different regions face specific challenges. Deeper analysis of the common challenges highlights the importance of cooperation and knowledge in addressing them.
The 28 countries of the European Union, and more specifically the Nordic economies, are the economic clusters that perform the best across the index. The scores of the EU28 bring to bear the focus on transitioning to a low-carbon economy, as was set out in the European Union's 20/20/20 Strategy. In fact, what contributed to improving energy security and generally lowering greenhouse gas emissions in the region were carbon-abatement measures, efficiency measures, and renewable energy deployment. Meanwhile, Eastern European countries are still struggling with import dependence and fossil fuel.
Economic clusters such as the ASEAN, Developing Asia, and the BRICS, on the other hand, got relatively low scores in the indicators of the energy triangle, highlighting the performance gap between developing nations and top performers.
The industrialized clusters are made up of more energy and emission-intensive economies, and as their performance indicates, they have different priorities.
In North America, performances varied drastically, indicating the different stages of economic development and resource wealth between Canada and the U.S., and Central American and Caribbean states. For instance, Canada reached high scores in investing in renewables and resource wealth, and the U.S. reached high scores in security, but they both received low marks in environmental indicators. Another indicator of variance is that North America includes very low performing countries, such as Haiti, but also one of the top ten global performers, Costa Rica. All of these factors have to be taken into account. Within this group there will be large differences also because it includes countries that are very import-dependent (the Caribbean and Central America) and others that are more self-sufficient.
In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the relationship between GDP and EAPI performance is ironically reversed. In fact, in comparison to other regions, the MENA region achieves the lowest average performance, even though the average GDP per capita is of USD $15,000—considerably higher than the next best performer, Sub-Saharan Africa. This is mainly due to the fact that, despite being the region of the world blessed with the most natural resources, its Achilles’ heel remains environmental sustainability.
There is no single pathway to achieving a balanced energy system, although the results do, however, underline the advantage economic development has over performance. The message of the EAPI report is that transition pathways differ from one country to the other, as each has different needs. This means that, in order to develop a global transition to a new energy structure, one has to consider all the core imperatives of the different energy structures to guarantee a long-term solution.
Photo: Light Painting (cc).
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The Global Energy Performance Index Report 2014
June 14, 2014
As countries grow and develop, one of their biggest challenges is establishing ways to maintain growth. This means constantly improving and remodeling the global energy system. In order to assess these global challenges, the World Economic Forum has developed the New Energy Architecture Initiative. In a world where all types of boundaries are slowly fading away, it has never been so imperative to understand the changes that are part of our everyday lives. Countries' individual energy architectures have different demands and that, along with the omnipresent dilemmas of economic growth versus environmental sustainability versus energy access, encompasses the center of this analysis.
The pillar of this work is the Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report (EAPI). The EAPI is a tool that was created to help countries monitor their work and progress through a series of indicators. The New Energy Architecture Project also focuses on different regions of the world and economic clusters such as the BRICS so as to evaluate the effect of cross-national factors on a country's energy system.
The Energy Architecture Initiative seeks to serve as a source of information, providing understanding of the phenomena that countries are currently facing, in order to foster a smooth transition of the current global energy structure. This year’s report, like earlier editions, looks at what a future energy structure could look like.
There is a pressing need to secure a sustainable future, especially taking into account the more than one billion people around the world who do not have reliable access to energy and the continued growth and industrialization that is shaping global energy markets. In such a context, it is no easy task to develop a structure that delivers a secure, environmentally sustainable, and affordable energy supply. In fact, as the report shows, all countries, despite having different performances, all have one thing in common: none of them are 100 percent prepared to face the upcoming challenges. Furthermore, they all struggle to find balance within the energy triangle: economic growth and development, environmental sustainability, energy access and security.
Obviously as countries each have varied natural resources, they are all pursuing energy development in different ways. At this point, finding a balance within the triangle while seeking economic growth is almost an oxymoron. In fact, countries often set aside environmental issues in order to focus on economic growth. However, as climate change is increasingly recognized as one of the world’s biggest threats, nobody can afford to ignore this imbalance. Unfortunately, as more companies put on a front of being more environmentally sustainable, many consumers fail to see the long-term impact.
The overriding goals of security, affordability, and sustainability require governments to use a new set of strategic tools in order to overcome conflicting spheres. These tools must to provide information and analysis that will improve the balance between policy objectives. The EAPI uses a set of indicators to assess and rank the energy architectures of 124 countries, placing emphasis on how each country performs across spheres of the energy triangle. The indicators show if a country's energy structure adds or detracts from the economy, the environmental impact of supply and consumption, and how safe and accessible and diversified the energy supply is.
In developing their responses to creating new energy architectures, individual countries and groups and different regions face specific challenges. Deeper analysis of the common challenges highlights the importance of cooperation and knowledge in addressing them.
The 28 countries of the European Union, and more specifically the Nordic economies, are the economic clusters that perform the best across the index. The scores of the EU28 bring to bear the focus on transitioning to a low-carbon economy, as was set out in the European Union's 20/20/20 Strategy. In fact, what contributed to improving energy security and generally lowering greenhouse gas emissions in the region were carbon-abatement measures, efficiency measures, and renewable energy deployment. Meanwhile, Eastern European countries are still struggling with import dependence and fossil fuel.
Economic clusters such as the ASEAN, Developing Asia, and the BRICS, on the other hand, got relatively low scores in the indicators of the energy triangle, highlighting the performance gap between developing nations and top performers.
The industrialized clusters are made up of more energy and emission-intensive economies, and as their performance indicates, they have different priorities.
In North America, performances varied drastically, indicating the different stages of economic development and resource wealth between Canada and the U.S., and Central American and Caribbean states. For instance, Canada reached high scores in investing in renewables and resource wealth, and the U.S. reached high scores in security, but they both received low marks in environmental indicators. Another indicator of variance is that North America includes very low performing countries, such as Haiti, but also one of the top ten global performers, Costa Rica. All of these factors have to be taken into account. Within this group there will be large differences also because it includes countries that are very import-dependent (the Caribbean and Central America) and others that are more self-sufficient.
In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the relationship between GDP and EAPI performance is ironically reversed. In fact, in comparison to other regions, the MENA region achieves the lowest average performance, even though the average GDP per capita is of USD $15,000—considerably higher than the next best performer, Sub-Saharan Africa. This is mainly due to the fact that, despite being the region of the world blessed with the most natural resources, its Achilles’ heel remains environmental sustainability.
There is no single pathway to achieving a balanced energy system, although the results do, however, underline the advantage economic development has over performance. The message of the EAPI report is that transition pathways differ from one country to the other, as each has different needs. This means that, in order to develop a global transition to a new energy structure, one has to consider all the core imperatives of the different energy structures to guarantee a long-term solution.
Photo: Light Painting (cc).
