Abstract
Today, social and economic well-being of nations greatly depends upon the availability, accessibility, affordability, and environmental acceptability of the provided energy services to the end-users. Therefore, effective energy policies and utilized technologies need to be leveraged as to improve and sustain a system’s energy security with reference to threats from external and internal events. To that end, energy supply diversity is often regarded as an essential approach that could assist in promoting energy security of an energy consuming system. Indeed, energy supply diversity is often regarded as a proxy for energy security. Moreover, despite the fact that many research efforts have been developed thus far to model energy security, a comprehensive approach that could capture the complex nexus of dynamics that transcend energy secure systems does not yet exist.
In this context, in this manuscript we present a critical taxonomy of the state-of-the-art literature and practices that apply to all major issues that stakeholders need to address for the design of energy secure systems. More specifically, we first present the generic system components along with the unique characteristics of potential energy secure systems. Following this, we recognize and present the most critical issues for the design and planning of energy secure systems, while we provide a respective classification of the related research efforts. Following that, we propose a conceptual System Dynamics approach upon the energy sector that could assist policy-makers and regulators in strategically planning energy security systems for the society. Finally, we wrap-up and discuss major gaps in the existing literature, while propose a future research agenda.
