How Does Energy Security Definition Vary Across Nations? A Review of Major Energy Consumers

Zhan-Ming Chen,Yi-Ming Sun,Yuan Chang

doi:10.6000/1929-6002.2015.04.02.4

Zhan-Ming Chen, Yi-Ming Sun + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.6000/1929-6002.2015.04.02.4

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Abstract

The energy security issue has been paid close attention by many countries owing to the rising energy demand, the limited energy reserve, and the climate change problem. In spite of the broad concern, there is no globally accepted definition of energy security because, for any country, the impact of energy insecurity is highly correlated with its economic status, its resource endowment, its geopolitical partnership, as well as many other nation-specific features. Therefore, by using some of the world's largest energy consuming nations as examples, this article reviews the definitions of energy security and discusses the strategies to enhance it, in order to provide insight for policy makers from different countries. The results find that major energy consuming countries take measures to improve energy security status primarily by improving energy self-sufficiency and increasing energy diversification. Besides, this study also provides suggestion for different countries to take part in international energy cooperation in order to achieve a Pareto improvement of their energy security statuses.

Highlights

With the energy problem becoming a hot topic in the world, the issue of energy security has undoubtedly been put into an important position [1]
Energy security can be divided into security of supply, security of demand, and security of transportation, while the focus varies from country to country
The resource endowment situation and the developing goal differ from country to country, so policy makers put emphasis on different aspects of energy security

Summary

Introduction

With the energy problem becoming a hot topic in the world, the issue of energy security has undoubtedly been put into an important position [1]. Since the United States' economy depends heavily on petroleum, sufficiency and steady price of petroleum are important for the energy security for the country.

Results

Conclusion