Going green and energy security

Interest in both environmental sustainability and energy security has been growing. In this paper, we study the role of environmental sustainability in determining a country's energy security. From the literature, it is found that there are growing efforts by researchers to quantify energy security using energy security indexes. In some recent studies, a key dimension of these indexes is environmental sustainability which is quantified using a pre-determined set of sustainability indicators. From seven such studies, three commonly used core and four supplementary sustainability indicators can be identified. Several major issues in index systems design and energy security index creation are correlation between these indicators, what are the appropriate weights to be assigned to them, and data availability and quality. Energy security generally involves broader issues at the national level. Possible tradeoffs between environmental sustainability, energy security, and economic competitiveness, commonly known as “the energy trilernma”, are highlighted.