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Energy policy aims to achieve multiple objectives. These include sustainability, security, access, and affordability, even in developed economies as high energy costs can hit households hard particularly in low-income groups. Also, for many countries, energy policy is strongly interlinked with development policy, thereby enhancing the competitiveness of real economies and promoting industrialization and technological leadership. Policymakers, particularly in Europe, have for decades enjoyed a very benign environment: relatively robust economic growth, low inflation, low interest rates, globalized supply chains and abundant and relatively low-cost energy, including pipeline gas. As a result, energy security and affordability fell down the policy agenda and sustainability and climate action to achieve net zero targets rose. One of the major impacts of the COVID shock and the Russia-Ukraine war (but more generally the rise in geopolitical tensions) has been the refocus of priorities with affordability and security rising in importance. With this refocusing, important dimensions have come into focus. These include the trade-offs involved in achieving the multiple objectives of energy policy, the role of governments versus markets, the financing of the transition, and a reconsideration of the role of hydrocarbons in the future energy mix. Given the multiple objectives that energy policy aims to achieve, there are bound to be at least short-term trade-offs. These trade-offs can take various shapes in different regions. Diversification of energy supplies enhances security, but it could undermine affordability and competitiveness by increasing costs. These trade-offs will become less acute in the longer-term and concerns about the security of hydrocarbon supply combined with the drive to tackle emissions will accelerate investment in renewables, particularly in the EU. However, the speed of the transition will differ across regions as the starting points in terms of energy consumption and energy access, the resource endowments and the financial and technological capabilities vary widely across the globe. Also, reliance on the minerals and new supply chains essential for the transition raises its own sustainability and security issues given the degree of concentration visible in clean energy supply chains. The rise of energy security and affordability in the policy agenda brings into focus the role of governments versus markets. One important implication of the changes in energy policy priorities is that we have seen a swing away from markets towards a greater role of the state in energy markets.
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