Is there a more reliable way to advise governments on national energy policy?

National targets for a carbon-free future have become an important cornerstone for environmental sustainability policy in many countries around the world.  However, when it comes to energy supply and demand, countries must also face decisions related to the impact of those policies on providing their respective societies with affordable access to energy (energy equity) and secure supplies of energy (energy security).  Issues around energy equity and energy security have in the past few years become especially relevant in light of the tensions in the Middle East and the conflict in the Ukraine. The World Energy Council (WEC) provides government policy makers with an Energy Transition Index (ETI) that measures their respective country’s levels of energy equity, energy security, and environmentally sustainable energy, all in the context of each country’s economic and social governance.  These measures are relied upon to inform environmental and energy policy, but is this index and its measures reliable?  Digging deeper into the measures that are used to construct the index and how they provide each country’s score in the three primary factors was needed to confirm its reliability as a policy guide.

We found that the ETI is widely used (presently 126 countries) but that reliability questions persist.  In order to improve reliability and validity, a change in how the index is structured is proposed.  Certain measures were re-organized into each of the three primary factors that are significant to energy transition policies. This represents a structural change to the ETI, that is more internally consistent and reliable. Our results suggest policy makers re-evaluate how they use the ETI to inform policy decisions regarding energy transition. For example, we draw attention to strong interdependencies among variables that measure energy equity and governance. Here, policy decisions must consider the effect of decisions regarding reducing carbon emissions on the availability of uninterruptible and affordable energy supply, a key requirement for economic and social development. There is also a strong national security incentive for investing in energy efficiency (production and consumption).

Developing diversity of energy sources includes taking a more sophisticated approach to using carbon-based energy rather than setting unrealistic goals for its total elimination. Also, missing from the WEC ETI is the need to take account of likely increased mining activities to provide the materials (domestic or imported) to support the transition to clean energy from fossil-fuel energy. These activities are likely to leave a negative environmental footprint that may be left out when environmental sustainability policy is limited to simple carbon reduction measures.  In summary, the proposed revisions can provide a more reliable and realistic assessment tool for environmental and energy policy determination. Lez M. Rayman-Bacchus & Philip R. Walsh (2025). Energy transition governance models and uncertainty: Comparative examination of the World Energy Council ETI framework (external link, opens in new window) . Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 220, 115887.