Preliminary study of energy security and energy resilience evaluation in Japan

Abstract

Improving national energy security has been recognized as one of the most important perspectives of energy policy in Japan. On the other hand, a notion of higher energy resilience has recently become common to make a domestic energy supply system stable since the Great East Japan earthquake occurred in 2011. Therefore, a purpose of this study is to establish frameworks that evaluate energy security and energy resilience quantitatively to design a sustainable energy system. An advanced framework for energy security evaluation is developed in which Resource Diversity, Import Price, Import Region Diversity, Environmental Impact and Energy Efficiency are selected as criteria, where each criterion is normalized between 0 (extremely low security) and 1 (extremely high security). In addition, a multi-objective analysis using the augmented ε-constraint method (AUGMECON) is conducted to determine the best energy resource configuration for a Japanese energy system from the perspective of both energy security and economic feasibility. On the other hand, energy resilience evaluations are conducted in accordance with four steps: identifying risks, assessing risks, building resilience, and evaluating resilience. Energy resilience is evaluated based on two criteria. The first one is Resilience Index which is calculated by a ratio between energy supply and energy demand. The second one is an economic loss incurred by a sudden energy supply interruption. In conclusion, in order to develop a sustainable energy system in Japan, it is important to increase the proportion of renewable energy consumption, which contributes to enhancing both national energy security and regional energy resilience.