RES and risk: Renewable energy's contribution to energy security. A portfolio-based approach

Abstract

During the first decade of the 21st century, renewable energy sources (RES) had been gaining momentum due to environmental issues. Concerns about pollution and climate change have raised public awareness, encouraging governments to adopt policies to preserve and protect the environment. Regarding energy, RES promotion, together with energy efficiency measures, has been the main policy response to address such concerns. As a consequence, RES development during the first decade of the 21st century has been remarkable.Although RES deployment has been mainly focused on achieving environmental goals, its potential contribution to energy security went not unnoticed. However, it is worth noting that while the trade-off between environmental goals – and the use of RES to accomplish them – and competitiveness has been widely explored, the relationship between energy security and RES has received less attention, both at the conceptual and energy policy levels. This article tries to address such a relationship. The present article focuses on renewable electricity imports as illustrated by the case of the Mediterranean Solar Plan.After introducing the energy security/energy risk concept and its dimensions, the article focuses on the contribution of RES in terms of security of supply for a given energy mix using the portfolio theory. Most of the analyses of the interactions between RES and energy security focus on the national level, with RES being mainly conceived as a substitute for fuel imports to produce electricity and reduce so-called energy dependence. However, new transmission technologies allow the import of electricity directly from neighbouring countries far out of the range of regular electricity lines. Therefore, this article tries to broaden the analysis of energy security to international RES trade flows, applying the previous discussion to the main project involving significant international green electricity trade, the Mediterranean Solar Plan.