The Puzzles of Energy Trilemma

Views are Personal - Dr. Anandajit Goswami

The Energy Trilemma is a word which includes a dilemma in it. Essentially, the dilemma is to ensure human progress and meet civilizational needs by balancing the needs of energy equity and environmental sustainability.

If we look onto the three planks of the energy trilemma viz. energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability, the puzzle will become clearer. Any country, for the betterment of quality of life will need energy which is clean and secure for a long time in the future.

Hence, for progress, development of human society, energy security is a must. This energy security definitely also imbibes the quality of energy which is being supplied. To give an analogy, India can only grow and develop when all the 10 crore rural households  are provided with a clean energy for cooking like LPG in a sustained way for a long term. However, energy security is not enough.

The sufficiency condition of the energy trilemma comes from the remaining two planks of - energy equity and sustainability. The moment these two planks are introduced into the  energy trilemma definitional frame, the picture becomes a little murky. 

By imposing these two essential planks into the energy trilemma, it is ensured that questions of energy justice and social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability are plugged in within the energy discourse. Energy justice, equity and the social, economic and environmental domains of sustainability are quite complicatedly inter related.

Hence,  for defining human progress, it is essential that any country grows, meets her energy needs by balancing the pressing questions of energy equity and justice and addresses the social, economic and environmental domains of sustainability. Justice is an ideal and abstract term and takes a long time to achieve. 

Moreover, justice and all domains of sustainability are very much perspective dependent. It is being guided by the existing and futuristic policies of different agents in a society and how it shapes up in future.  In an anthropocentric world of today which started with a Descartian thinking, it is essential that the planks of energy trilemma be solved. Some of the principles of solving this can be borrowed from various ecological movements, environmental justice related movements across the world complemented by local solutions.

A country like India, which stands  very low at 109 in World Energy Council’s Energy Trilemma Index has a long way to go to solve the puzzles of Energy Trilemma . It will  go a long way and take some time and tangible actions beyond rhetoric in ensuring that India also stands together with developed countries like Switzerland and much above countries like Gabon, Namibia, South Africa, Thailand, China, Brazil which are all doing much better than India in the context of World Energy Council’s Energy Trilemma Index as of now. A country which created the birth of decentralized Gram Swaraj movement by the Father of the Nation  only has a bright future ahead to solve this puzzle and move upward in this index.