Macroeconomic and political aspects of energy security – Exploratory data analysis

Although the issue of energy security stands high on the scale of the European Union's priorities, there has been no single accepted definition of energy security thus far. In light of the global economic crisis and political instability, the issue of energy security is directly linked to geopolitical and macroeconomic stability. This paper offers a new method of measuring energy security, which unlike the existing indicators of energy stability, in addition to economic and environmental indicators, also includes the political and social aspects within the composite indicator of country risk. The new Energy Security Index (ESI) is defined based on the application of Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Analysis of the values of a new ESI indicator shows that energy security is greatly influenced by GDP per capita, country risk, carbon intensity, energy intensity, final energy consumption per capita and electricity prices, while the least importance rests with the share of renewable sources in energy consumption and energy dependence. The values of the Index by country are stable over the entire observed period, but significant differences are noticeable between countries. The highest index values are reported in Luxembourg, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, and the lowest in Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia and Poland. With the aim of robustness check, the results of EU member states rankings were compared to country rankings based on the Energy Trilemma Index. Compared to country rankings based on the Energy Trilemma Index, three countries recorded the same rank (Denmark, Check Republic and Bulgaria), and the biggest deviation of 9 ranking position was reported by Luxembourg. The results of the research show that there is a statistically important difference in the value of energy security index between the observed groups of countries classified according to the level of macroeconomic stability.