What is energy security?

In the 1970s energy security referred to the provision of imports to western markets of oil at stable prices and the availability of domestic fossil fuels free from disturbance from labour unrest. The goal of energy security was to prevent long lines of cars waiting for limited gasoline or electricity power cuts resulting from industrial disputes. For many it is an aspect to be internalised into modern energy markets via effective price signals and market mechanisms in order to hedge risks. Is energy security a matter of national and international markets or is it a matter of geopolitical power struggles?

Daniel Yergin wrote in the March/April 2006 edition of Foreign Affairs:

‘… energy security has repeatedly emerged as an issue of great importance, and it is so once again today. But the subject now needs to be rethought, for what has been the paradigm of energy security for the past three decades is too limited and must be expanded to include many new factors. Moreover, it must be recognized that energy security does not stand by itself but is lodged in the larger relations among nations and how they interact with one another.’

We have shared Yergin’s vision that today’s energy security challenges are far more subtle and complex than those of the mid 1970s. We take an Energy and Security approach.

We have assumed the challenges to be global – global markets, global research, global knowledge and global threats. The United States and the United Kingdom face similar challenges from different starting points and we believe that thanks to the Cambridge MIT Institute together the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have a unique opportunity to gain fresh insight in partnership with industry and a wide community of other academics.

Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it. And for how much longer can countries like ours allow the security of our energy supply to be dependent on some of the most unstable parts of the world?
Tony Blair, Former British Prime Minister, Labour Party Conference, September 2005.