Germany leads globally in energy security levels, thanks to renewables - study

Germany boasts the highest energy security level in the world, due in large part to the wide spread use of renewable energy sources in the country, according to a study by Abdelrahman Azzuni and Christian Breyer published on the scholar platform MDPI. In their report, “Global Energy Security Index and Its Application on National Level”, the researchers from the School of Energy Systems at Finland’s LUT University examined the global performance of all countries’ energy security as well as their performance in 15 dimensions that articulate energy security. Germany achieved the highest ranking according to the study’s aggregated energy security index (ESI), scoring high in each of the 15.

Germany especially excelled in the “resilience dimension”, in which it achieved the best performance compared to all other dimensions. The strength in resilience means that “Germany has high adaptive capacity to cope with changes and shocks in the energy system in order to ensure the continuity of a functioning society and system”. Germany also scored well in “policy," the study notes, with the study saying it  "has developed an advanced political system and regulations with regard to the energy system to ensure energy security. Such an achievement within the policy dimension helped to have the resilience performance on the high end.” While the country scored low on the “availability” dimension due to its lack of natural resources, the authors point out that good policies and high adaptive capacity mitigated those deficiencies.