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World Energy Trilemma Summary

Guest lecture on 1
st
November 2013
By- J.K Mehta, Regional Manager Asia
Presentation timeline of the lecture was like this:
1) Introduction to World Energy Council
What were the forces to establish World Energy Council
Activities of World Energy Council
2) World Energy Trilemma
What is the Trilemma
Why is Trilemma
Challenges of Coal and Nuclear energy
Challenges of Accessibility
Major Breakthroughs to address Energy Security
3) Government policies for Energy Security
Failures of the policies
Coordination among the organisations for R&D
4) Eco System balancing by Natural calamities
5) Sustainability indexes and the performances of some nations
6) Learnings

Introduction to World Energy Council
World Energy Council promotes affordable energy and safety measures to sustain the energy on globe.
The council was established in 1923 located in London, India has been a member of the council since
1924.
The council is accredited to United Nations and is an NGO; more than 3000 organisations from
government and non-government are the members of the council.
What were the forces drive to establish the World Energy Council
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During the First World War the participated countries utilised lot of energy and exploited many energy
sources to fight well, that resulted into lot of energy waste. That was the time many experts from
different countries realized the need of energy security, so thought of forming a council that can
address these issues. From that thought the World Energy Council was originated.
Activities of World Energy Council
WEC (World Energy Council) organises world largest meeting in the area of energy called World
Energy Congress, where many experts from different nations come together and address the issues on
predefined agenda.
WEC now undertakes a wide range of activities to help further the vision of a sustainable energy
future.WEC does lot of research on energy policies and activities of different nations and organizations
to facilitate feasible decision making process regarding investments on energy and sustainability.
World Energy Trilemma
What country leads the world in providing stable, affordable and clean energy? The answer is
that no one does. And that is a problem.
Canada is a world leader in supplying stable and affordable energy, according to research
conducted by the World Energy Council in collaboration with Oliver Wyman. However, it
doesnt rank in the top ten nations for clean energy. Switzerland, a big user of nuclear and hydro
power, is one of the top five in delivery of stable and clean energy. But it lags in affordability.
Brazil and Italy both provide clean and reasonably priced energy, but no country scores well on
all three measures. The fact is, currently no form of energy satisfies all three criteria. Energy
policymakers, accustomed to operating in a relatively stable environment with a clear direction,
now find themselves struggling to balance conflicting agendas. As a result, energy policy is
mired in uncertainty, which could spell danger for long-term energy investment. Policymakers
and business leadersneed to rethink their approach to energy sustainability, and this gave a
birth to a concept Energy Trilemma.
The World Energy Trilemma refers to the fact that a sustainable energy system needs to provide
secure, affordable, and environmentally-sensitive energy. In many countries, there are policy
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debates across all three dimensions of the energy trilemma. However, research conducted with
the World Energy Council shows that few countries perform well on all three dimensions.

Nearly half (59) of 129 countries assessed in the annual Energy Sustainability Index prepared by
the World Energy Council and Oliver Wyman rank within the top 25 countries of the world on
one dimension. But only 14 countries perform strongly across two dimensions, and only five
countries (Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom, and Spain) currently rank in the top
25 countries across all three.
One underlying reason that policymakers struggle to form policies that will improve performance
across all three of these dimensions is that no single form of energy satisfies all three of these
criteria. Fossil fuels continue to beat renewable forms of energy in terms of both affordability
and reliability. Solar and wind power are much cleaner, but still operate intermittently and
continue to be more expensive than conventional energy.
As a result, energy policymakers have trouble reconciling the conflicting agendas inherent in
prioritizing different forms of energy. Each country also faces its own unique challenges given
its unique resource mix, trading partners, geopolitical position, and budgetary environment -- so
there is no single preferred method for achieving a balance across all three dimensions.

Having said that, history shows that if a country focuses too much on one dimension, it's very
difficult to switch and address the other two dimensions. So it's very important for countries to
set a course now which is sensitive to all three dimensions. Otherwise, countries may remain
locked into systems that will be very painful to correct later.
Challenges of Accessibility
He started this discussion with a statement Energy cannot be stored, it has to be utilized immediately.
Then he explained this statement with an example of Indian perspective i.e a power plant is Bihar shut
downed abruptly due to lack of transmission facilities those can carry the produced power to rest of the
parts of country.
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Here he explained the need of infrastructure that can meet the challenge of accessibility, he also
mentioned about rural India which is not able get electricity not even for 15 hours due to poor
accessibility to power.
Major Breakthroughs to address Energy Security
At the final stage of this topic he mentioned some major inventions that can provide feasible energy to
people. Some examples included solar energy transmission from satellites through electromagnetic
waves to earth which includes lot of investments and transmission losses .Second example was extracting
Hydrogen and Oxygen from water (H2O) where hydrogen can use for energy purposes and Oxygen provides
better air.
Government policies for Energy Security
Failures of the policies
During this topic the speaker recalled his experience while he was working in Maharashtra for a
company which required lot of energy for its day to production activities. Government issued a policy to
it to use diesel as energy source, the company made huge infrastructure facilities accordingly. Later
with the issues raised by farmers near the plant who are in need of diesel found huge scarcity for the
same, then government changed its policy favouring to the farmers that the company should not use
diesel as its energy source.
So with the improper policies of less long term vision leaving many industries a tough situation.
With this he concluded that government policies should be in such a way that those can address
industries, people and environment with equal weightage and with long term sustain.
Coordination among the organizations for R&D
In this topic he discussed how the diverse industries are working on R&D for same energy sustaining
solution, he recommended instead of working in silos united efforts can reduce the investments and
time effectively.
Some major organizations are doing the same, they appeal to planning commission to work unitedly on
R&D.
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Eco System balancing by Natural calamities
Beginning of this topic he gave a statement Environment balances its eco-system at any cost.
He elaborated the same with an example of Fukushima disaster, where the fishery men exploiting the
fishes more than what optimal is. The disaster completely smashed down the boats and infrastructure
which would take minimum 3 years of time to resume their operations, till then the livelihood of fish in
the sea improves and reaches to normal level.
Sustainability indexes and the performances of some nations
J.K Mehta also talked about the results of the 2013 Energy Sustainability Index. The Energy
Sustainability Index is the worlds most comprehensive ranking of countries energy policies and
evaluates how well 129 countries balance the three conflicting agendas involved in achieving
energy sustainability what the WEC has called the energy trilemma; energy security, energy
equity and environmental sustainability.

The Index shows that developed countries with higher shares of energy coming from low- and
zero-carbon energy sources supported by well-established energy-efficiency programmes, such
as Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden, outperform most countries across all three dimensions of
2013 Rank Country
1 Switzerland
2 Denmark
3 Sweden
4 Austria
5 United Kingdom
6 Canada
7 Norway
8 New Zealand
9 Spain
10 France
Key Similarities Key Differences

Higher-income countries
(GDP per capita greater
than USD 25,500)

Large discrepancy in
use of nuclear energy

OECD members

Low and high fossil fuel
reserves

Post-industrial, service-
based economies

Net energy importers
and exporters

High (>25%) use of low-

and zero-carbon energy
sources in electricity mix

Various geographic
locations
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the energy trilemma. Nevertheless, it is clear that all countries still struggle to balance all three
aspects of the trilemmas currently conflicting agendas. Only five countries in the top 10 have
been awarded a AAA score with Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom and
Spain being the only countries that historically demonstrate their ability to manage the trade-offs
between the three competing dimensions equally.
Learnings-Overall the session was enriching enough and I got to know that there are people
who are actually doing something great in order to preserve our Mother Earth. The need of
preserving energy for future generations , practicing sustainable business practices when we
enter into organizations for organization sustaining and people and finally as a future leaders of
the country the implications of effective policies that ensures sustainability.