WORLD ENERGY PULSE 2023

The World Energy Council has published results from its latest World Energy Pulse, which polled more than 700 energy leaders and decisionmakers. The resulting data set provides the most up-to-date snapshot of current attitudes towards progress on energy transition based on responses from across the global energy community.

As the energy sector continues to be impacted by the aftershocks from COVID-19, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and an international scramble to respond to President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the World Energy Pulse shows that almost half (46%) of respondents cite national self-interests and the risk of a green technology arms race as the greatest obstacles to progressing orderly, clean and just energy transitions.

National interests continue to dominate as 59% of respondents agree that energy independence is critical to securing their countries’ climate-energy-security agendas. However, this ‘me-first’ sentiment is challenged with the overwhelming (84%) acceptance that energy interdependence is the new global reality.

In the strongest sentiment within the survey, 86% of respondents said that effectively managing choices and trade-offs using the World Energy Trilemma framework – energy security, affordability, and sustainability – is the best approach to avoiding disorderly transitions and addressing the new and emerging challenges of climate resilient energy for sustainable development. The Trilemma framework offers countries, regions and cities a way to track, benchmark, and guide performance on managing clean, just and inclusive energy transitions. The framework will also guide many of the discussions at the upcoming World Energy Congress, taking place in Rotterdam in April 2024, which will convene 7,000 visionary world energy leaders and thousands more energy ecosystem shapers to share new ideas, solutions and achievements in redesigning climate resilient energy for billions of better lives and a healthy planet.