Politicising Demand Side Management for Energy Security

Energy politics and policymaking is, like energy systems, in transition in many parts of the world. This is partly because of political commitments to, and strategies for, reducing emissions and the wide range of geopolitical, supply chain, and foreign policy shifts that ensue from, and relate to, those targets and strategies. Within this context, energy security is being rethought – not least to take account of the fact that the material bases of energy systems have started, and will continue, to shift from fossil fuels and attendent supply chains to renewable bases systems with very different resource and non-resource inputs. Increasingly, particularly in Europe with the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war, energy security is being refocused onto greater domestic independence in terms of component and resource inputs, rapid build-out of fossil fuel alternatives, electrification, grid development, and demand reduction – particularly of fossil fuels but also in aggregate terms. The economic and political costs of this form of, supply focused, secure transition are relatively high. This paper argues, like Bento et al (2023), that current attempts to rethink energy security need to incorporate a much wider range of demand side management (DSM) measures to deliver reliable access at lower cost. Too often, demand reduction is narrowly understood as ’energy efficiency’ whereas DSM includes flexibility; storage; reduction in peak demand; buildings and goods efficiency; and emerging circular economy strategies. It draws on data produced by low energy demand systems scholarship on the lower cost, and higher welfare, implications of low energy demand systems and rethinks how to deliver energy security through these lenses. This is an explicit attempt to politicise current, deeply embedded, assumptions that lead to an excessive emphasis on delivering on the supply-side of energy security and to offer alternative, more affordability focused solutions.