This document discusses the concept of "energy security" within the European Union's energy policy. It provides various definitions of energy security that focus on reliable and affordable energy supplies being free from major disruptions. The document outlines the constituting elements of energy security as reliability in the short term, affordability and adequacy in the long term, and sustainability in the very long term. It discusses how the EU's concept of energy security has evolved from simply securing energy supplies within the internal market to a more comprehensive approach that balances achievement of these various elements over different timeframes and institutional levels from local to global.

1. Is Energy Security
“zee” Objective
of the EU Energy Policy?
Jean-Michel Glachant
Director Florence School of Regulation
Holder of the Loyola de Palacio Chair
Claeys & Casteels Conference
Brussels, 1st February 2012

2. What do we mean in Europe when
we speak about ‘energy security’?

3. • “Will Azerbaijan invest more or less in its oil and gas upstream
in the coming decade?”
• “Should French public service gas storage supply Britons when
the big Rough storage breaks in the UK?”
• “Does German wind stress the Belgian electricity transmission
grid too much?”
• “Could the low income elderly household in Athens, Bilbao,
Budapest or Bucharest pay the bill next winter?”

4. Various definitions
- Stern (2002, 6): „… threats of supply disruptions arising
from risks associated with sources of gas supplies, the
transit and the facilities through which gas is delivered.“
- IEA (2004, 33): „… capability to manage, for a given time,
external market influences which cannot be balanced by
the market itself.“

5. Various definitions
- Barton et al. (2004): “Energy security… access to sufficient
energy resources at reasonable prices for the foreseeable
future free from serious risk of major disruption or service.”
- OECD (2007, 3): “Energy security is about vulnerability to
disruption… reliable supplies at affordable prices…”

6. Constituting elements
Reliability (short term physical equilibrium)
Affordability (social equilibrium: economic
Adequacy (long term economic equilibrium)
access)
Affordability (social equilibrium: economic
access)

7. Constituting elements / Cted
Sustainability (very long term ecological
equilibrium)
Timeframe: Short-term (reliability) vs long-
term (adequacy) or XXLT (sustainability)
Institutional levels: Local vs. national vs.
regional vs. global level

8. Emergence of a European concept
From security of supply completing the internal market to a
comprehensive European energy security concept:
 a dynamic equilibrium between the achievement of…

9. • What is the general policy framework
governing EU energy security?
• What actors, what tools & what
priorities?
• Then who is taking care of what?
• RES Mediterranean Basin example

11. The book analyses:
• The developments of the concept toward
energy security
• the impact of the Third Package
• the major role of infrastructures
• The most recent and relevant EU
instruments (see: EU tools) in the field of
oil & gas

12. As well as:
• experiences of TSOs working together in
ENTSO-E to secure energy supply
• the external dimension of EU energy policy
The book analyses:
• the Southern gas corridor development
• the January 2009 gas crisis
• the Baltic Energy Market Interconnection
Plan

13. Jean-Michel.Glachant@EUI.eu