Shocked into resilience: can clean electricity solve the energy trilemma?

Give, take, push and pull. At any point in time, there are trade-offs between the imperatives of energy security, equity and sustainability.

This ‘energy trilemma’, coined by the World Energy Council more than a decade ago, captures perennial tensions shaping energy policy – securing supply, improving access and affordability, and reducing environmental impact. For many countries, especially energy importers, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine elevated securing supply over other priorities but also helped accelerate the shift towards renewables. The Hormuz oil shock has reinforced the need for diversified sources of supply and increased home-grown production and storage. Renewables, combined with batteries and grid upgrades, can play a decisive role in securing abundant, affordable and clean power.

But in a geopolitically turbulent world with heightened supply risks, the transition will be rocky.

Read also: Freedom – renewables break fossil fuel stranglehold

The changing energy trilemma

From the rise of industrialisation to around the turn of the millennium, energy policy mainly focused on the tension between prices and availability of supply. This dilemma first came to a head in 1973, when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries implemented an embargo against countries that had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War. The resulting shock drove oil prices up nearly 300%, creating the first global energy crisis (the second would come in 1979, in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution). Security, access and cost were key factors.

By the turn of the millennium, global warming had added a third concern: sustainability. During the following two decades, the push towards decarbonisation saw a growing focus on emissions. The priorities of this new energy trilemma have since created an unstable equilibrium – while no objective is more important than the others, at any given time real-world events can increase the urgency of one more than the others. And in 2022, priorities shifted again.

As the quotation popularly attributed to Mark Twain remarks, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”, the Russian invasion of Ukraine saw the focus on energy once again change from a technical issue (how to optimise use) to a strategic concern (how to ensure sufficient supply). In 2026, history is rhyming more strongly than ever, with Iran once again a focus of geopolitics and a new oil crisis pushing energy security to the top of the agenda.

Energy security is built on reliability and resilience

Repeated bouts of both local and international energy-market volatility, caused by factors from wars to severe weather, place more emphasis on resilience – i.e., ensuring a nation's system can reliably provide energy to its people even during supply shocks caused by shipping disruptions, extreme weather, cyberattacks, infrastructure failure, war or sanctions.

The US, Europe and China responded differently to the 2022 and 2026 energy shocks (see Figure 1), yet some commonalities are clear. Each nation, irrespective of whether they are an energy importer or exporter – sought more diversification by power type and supply source. They ramped up domestic generation of fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear, and built greater storage capacity. Grid technology and infrastructure upgrades are being undertaken to integrate more renewables generation and embed defences against cyberattacks and extreme weather. Finally, strategic reserves and storage targets remain essential backstops.

FIG 1. The US, Europe and China have responded differently to recent oil and gas shocks¹

This focus on resilience is accelerating the energy transition to renewables, which are far less vulnerable to geopolitical instability. Even though solar is now the cheapest form of energy in history and the easiest to install, bottlenecks have shifted from generation to storage and distribution. Clean electrification is transforming the energy system, but this process will not be smooth nor fast. As Greg Jackson, Founder and CEO of British utility Octopus Energy,² observes: “The UK is halfway across the road in its energy transition, which, by the way, is the worst place to stop [...] Our estimate is that there's going to be six times more investment in the consumption end of the energy transition than in the generation end.”

Our estimate is that there's going to be six times more investment in the consumption end of the energy transition than in the generation end

Greg Jackson, Founder and CEO, Octopus Energy

The variables and long-term nature of the transition validate the ‘ready for any scenario’ energy policies that the US, Europe and China aim to implement. Within each of them, accelerated adoption of new energy technologies – solar modules, batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicles (EVs) – is integral to embedding resilience against fossil-fuel shocks, as noted by BloombergNEF³.

Moreover, renewables set expansion records for a 23rd consecutive year in 2025, with global capacity additions increasing by 16% to 800 gigawatts (GW) despite supply-chain strains, grid-connection delays, financial pressures and policy shifts⁴ (the latter being most notable in the US, with the partial dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act), according to the Internation Energy Authority (IEA) (see Figure 2). After years out of favour, nuclear power is also strongly back on the table – about 80 reactors are under construction, with around 120 more planned, mostly in Asia.⁵

FIG 2. Global annual renewable energy capacity additions set new records in 2025¹

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Energy shocks spur innovation

Just as recent energy shocks are spurring nations to adopt new technologies, past energy crises often drove innovation that has led to structural improvements in efficiency. This legacy is often overlooked.

For example, the 1973 oil crisis led to improvements in vehicle engineering, aerodynamics, materials and packaging, along with associated standards for measuring fuel consumption. These changes resulted in smaller, lighter but more spacious cars that were more fuel efficient.

The 1970s oil shocks were also key drivers for R&D in wind and solar, as well as horizontal drilling for oil and gas (now known as fracking), all of which are now major commercial vectors for change. As a hard-hit oil importer, Brazil pioneered the use of ethanol in transport, scaling biomass and biofuel technology while also building out hydro and its domestic oil industry.

Today, renewed energy shocks are acting as fresh drivers for improved technology. Innovations range from grid-scale storage and the next generation of more powerful wind turbines to lithium‑iron phosphate batteries for EVs and small modular reactors for nuclear energy.

Can clean electrification end the energy trilemma?

In 1865, English economist William Jevons observed that more efficient steam engines did not ultimately reduce coal consumption. In contrast, more of the fossil fuel was burned as the efficiency gain enabled wider adoption of the technology. The Jevons paradox still holds true today – more efficient cars and lighting have lowered the costs of driving and illuminating homes and cities; similarly, declining costs per calculation underpin the surge in computing and AI use.  

In 2025, the IEA wrote that the “age of electricity” had arrived, with global electricity demand growing around 2.3 times faster than total energy demand to add around 800 terawatt-hours (TWh) (see Figure 3). Electricity demand from EVs and datacentres climbed 38% and 17% respectively. Under its Energy Transition Scenario, BloombergNEF predicts demand from EVs, datacentres, buildings, industry, air conditioning and heat pumps will make electricity the top supplier of final energy globally by 2047⁶.

FIG 3. Global electricity demand is growing rapidly¹

Although policy support was instrumental in pioneering renewables development, these trends show that market forces are now in command. Speaking about the rise of electrification at our 2026 Transition Investment Summit, John Kerry, former US Secretary of State and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, concurred: “This transition is not driven by politics: it is driven by economic competition”.

A reliable, resilient, affordable and sustainable energy system built on renewables can only be achieved through a long and complex transition. But the rewards would be immense. Where fossil-fuel supply can be hostage to geopolitics, ubiquitous sun and wind can replace vulnerability with resilience. As oil shocks drive price spikes for businesses and consumers in both importing and exporting countries, renewables offer the cheapest form of energy in history. Emissions have cloaked cities from Victorian England to modern Shaanxi and continue to heat the climate, while clean electricity and storage offer energy abundance that helps divorce economic activity from burning carbon.

By solving security, equity and sustainability challenges, clean electrification has the potential to consign the energy trilemma to history.