Energy insecurity in Asia: A multi-dimensional analysis

Energy insecurity has been a critical challenge facing Asia's economic growth. This study constructs a comprehensive index for energy insecurity as well as examines its trend using a sample of 24 selected Asian countries during the 1990–2014 period. For this purpose, principal component analysis is applied to a series of 12 selected variables. The variables are standardized using different techniques including z-score, min-max and softmax normalization. Three different measures of energy insecurity are created accordingly. The empirical results depict the trend of increasing energy insecurity in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. On the other hand, the trend of fluctuating but recently improving energy security was observed in Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, and United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, the trend of fluctuating but recently increasing energy insecurity was found in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, and Tajikistan. These findings are robust to all three measures of energy insecurity.