Energy security and sustainable development from the standpoint of energy paradigm of Iran

Abstract

After 1970’s energy crisis and west world’s oil shock policy makers especially from demand-side countries, follow a new approach to set national energy strategies. Energy security emerged as a systematic respond to the global crisis and is aimed to improve energy systems resilience level. The high correlation between economic indicators, as GDP and energy consumption, especially for energy export countries, allows considering energy security as a long-term respond to support sustainable development. In this paper we aimed to investigate energy security as a key concept and discuss how it is tied to the sustainable development. The research method is the literature and document review. As it has been shown, energy security is a complicated concept needed to be localized to address local challenges of certain country. Hence, it is crucial for Iran to study energy security from a new angle to adopt more sustainable energy policies. It is expected that in a near future, energy security will become a challenging issue for Iranian policy makers.