World Energy Trilemma Index

• Energy Security measures a nation’s capacity to meet current and future energy demand reliably, withstand and bounce back swiftly from system shocks with minimal disruption to supplies. The dimension covers the effectiveness of management of domestic and external energy sources, as well as the reliability and resilience of energy infrastructure.
• Energy Equity assesses a country’s ability to provide universal access to reliable, affordable, and abundant energy for domestic and commercial use. The dimension captures basic access to electricity and clean cooking fuels and technologies, access to prosperity-enabling levels of energy consumption, and affordability of electricity, gas, and fuel.
• Environmental Sustainability of energy systems represents the transition of a country’s energy system towards mitigating and avoiding potential environmental harm and climate change impacts. The dimension focuses on productivity and efficiency of generation, transmission and distribution, decarbonisation, and air quality. 

The World Energy Trilemma Index ranks energy performance of 127 countries on the three dimensions based on global and national data and includes recommended areas for improvements on policy coherence and integrated policy innovation, helping to develop well calibrated energy systems. 

The goal of the Index is to provide insights into a country’s relative energy performance with regards to Energy Security, Energy Equity and Environmental Sustainability. In doing so, the Index highlights a country’s challenges in balancing the Energy Trilemma and opportunities for improvements in meeting energy goals now and in the future. The Index aims to inform policy makers, energy leaders, and the investment and financial sector. Index rankings provide comparisons across countries on each of the three dimensions, whilst historical indexed scores provide insights into the performance trends of each country over time. 

The tool can also be used to:  

• Learn from leading performers and best practice 
• Assess effectiveness of energy policies for enabling balanced transition management 
• Analyse the urgency of competing priorities 
• Test the relative impact of focus shifts and new directions 
• Support dialogue on integrated policy innovation 

The World Energy Trilemma ranking provides a good platform for countries to celebrate policy gains, positive trends, and performance relative to neighbours. By collaborating with the Council, national Member Committees can work to develop bespoke national and sub-national Trilemma models.  

World Energy Trilemma Index 2021

2021 was the second year that the Council published the World Energy Trilemma Index during the COVID-19 pandemic, which still continues to threaten health and disrupt global economy. While further insights into the effect of the pandemic on energy are becoming visible, such as depressed demand and fragmented local recoveries, the longer-term implications for energy systems and transition remain unclear.

THE ONLINE TOOL

Users are encouraged to read this report in conjunction with the Online Tool, which presents full results per country, as well and commentary and insights from national experts, including:

• The 2021 Rank, Score and Grade, including a short introduction of the country accompanied by high level statistics.
• The Energy Trilemma Balance Triangle is a snap-shot of the balance of a national energy system.
• Historical Trends for all three dimensions using 2000 as a base year; each dimension is tracked from a base score in the base year to show improvements or declines over time compared to a national baseline.
• Commentary on national trends and outlook of the country’s energy system; written by Council Member Committee experts to help understand the historical trends and policies that affect the Trilemma scores.
• Key indicators driving the scores in each dimension are presented: the 2020 score and a trend since 2010 (rising, falling or stable).

ONLINE TOOL