Energy Security and Efficiency Analysis of Renewable Technologies

Abstract

Global conflicts in securing the energy resources and the climate change have propelled the investment in renewable energy (RE) research and deployment in the last two decades. This chapter statistically confirms the relationship between renewable research and energy security and benchmarks the efficiency of the R&D efforts in different RE technologies. Our findings reveal that the inexpensive and abundant natural gas in energy markets restrained the research on energy technologies particularly after 2010. This bears a risk for the diminished capacity of the countries in energy security, especially in bull energy markets. The results of the super-efficiency model of data envelopment analysis (DEA) reveal that the wind and biofuel technologies are the efficiency leaders in R&D, where each dollar spent on their research has a bigger impact on energy security than other RE types. The countries should continue investing on renewable research and develop collective innovation and commercialization strategies, especially in solar, geothermal, and ocean technologies in order to achieve sustainable energy efficiency levels for providing the energy security.