Energy, Sustainability, and Resilience in Asia: The Inter-Linkages

In post-COVID-19, the world is going through an uncertain geo-political era with wars between Russia and Ukraine as well as Palestine and Israel, apart from different other conflicts (both internal and external) globally. WEF (2023) found that the critical risks in 2023 would be “energy supply crisis,” “rising inflation,” and “food supply crisis.” This is in addition to the already existing environmental risks like climate inaction, extreme weather, disasters, biodiversity losses, etc. Energy resilience is the ability to provide a stable supply of energy to society, including consumers, in normal times, and to reduce the impact of natural and man-made disasters and other shocks on human life and assets, economic activities, and society in the event of energy supply disruptions in emergency situations. The safety and robustness in terms of hardware and software, as well as the ability to quickly restore operations before and after a disaster occurs. The sustainability of energy supply is critical to future development pathways. While fossil fuel and coal-based energy are still being used and are discussed in the global geo-political as well as climate agenda, renewable energy is the core of the future. At the global level, the geopolitical relation often influences the resilience and sustainability issues related to energy sector, including its relation to climate change, alternate energy sources, technology transfer, and carbon neutrality. At the national level, the countries need to promote more decentralized power system to enhance their resilience, need to invest on the resilience building of the power infrastructures and provide proper market mechanism for innovation and low energy goods. At the local level, the decentralized grid becomes extremely important and local government networks are essential. At the individual level, it is the behavior change that matters, and education and awareness for a low-carbon society are very important.