Energy growth and security in an increasingly disordered transition

This was the theme of the International Energy Week 2026 held last week in London. IE Week is one of the most prestigious international annual conferences and it is organized by the Energy Institute. This year’s theme was “Energy growth and security in an increasingly disordered transition.” A theme that embodies the global energy reset that is currently taking place.

Andy Brown, president of Energy Institute, said that achieving net zero depends on businesses capable of building “infrastructure and digital systems that make the transition investable and durable”. He emphasized the critical need to reduce power costs to stimulate the electrification and demand growth necessary for a successful transition.

Reducing power costs has become critical to the European economy, but also to Cyprus. In Europe expensive energy has led to de-industrialisation. Price shocks and blackouts also lead to political instability.

We live in an energy-hungry world and ensuring affordability, sustainability and security have come on top of the energy agenda. This is what Cyprus is finding out the hard way. After years of lack of planning, Cyprus is stuck in a vicious cycle of reacting to emergencies instead of preparing through long-term planning for what we know is coming. And on top of that “every major energy project meant to bring down electricity prices in Cyprus has ground to a halt.”

At IE Week, the Munich Security Conference and the IEA annual Ministerial Meeting in Paris, that took place in February, energy security was top of the agenda. It was stressed that “energy cannot stand alone. It has to be at the heart of any national regional strategy, because it underpins economic and industrial strategies, it underpins digital and AI strategies, it underpins climate goals and ambitions. And, of course, it underpins defence, because there is no national security without energy security.” Energy security is fundamentat to everything. As the FT pointed out “we must move beyond thinking solely in terms of efficiency and decarbonisation to prioritise resilience.”

Within an increasingly “disordered” energy transition and growing energy needs, energy security has emerged as the central, unifying, theme in the global energy debate, transcending the traditional divide between climate action advocates and skeptics and deniers. Within a “disordered” energy transition, characterized by geopolitical instability and volatile global politics, supply chain bottlenecks and rapidly shifting demand, all sides now leverage the concept of energy security to justify their respective, often divergent, energy strategies.

Energy security is the common ground where both the risks of climate change and the risks of a premature or chaotic energy transition are considered. It is no longer just an environmental or economic issue. It is the foundation of national security and Cyprus must plan for it accordingly.

Key messages from IE Week

Shell CEO Wael Sawan set the tone of the conference when he said the world is in an energy addition mode, not energy substitution. This has been historically the case and it still continues to be the case today.

Energy underpins everything. Stakes are high. The fundamentals do not change, supply and demand dictate. And energy demand has been and is growing. “We must be sure to build a resilient energy system for the future, before we dismantle the existing one.”

We live in a world that is becoming more uncertain. What certainty we have is that energy will continue to sit at the heart of it. But we should not just be preoccupied with the challenges but also recognise the opportunity to reimagine the energy system.

There is a fundamental change in the global energy debate. Renewables are no longer discussed as ideals or alternatives but are now measured in terms of reliability, scalability, and delivery. Energy transition must move from “ideological purity” and unrealistic targets to survive a growing political and social backlash.

Five billion people are striving to improve their living standards and access to affordable and reliable energy is central to this. Policies must remove obstacles not ambition. In this context, Africa needs the policies, the capital and investment to achieve energy security.

Energy security and the energy transition are Increasingly viewed as “two faces of the same coin,” where the goal is to make the transition, and the resulting system, more secure and resilient. 

China has understood this balance and is pursuing a “dual-track” strategy: expanding renewable capacity at a world-leading pace while maintaining a strong fossil fuel “safety net” to ensure energy security.

Electrification

IEA’s director, Fatih Birol, emphasized that the world is moving from burning fuels to using electricity to address both climate goals and energy security. He noted that electricity demand is growing twice as fast as overall energy demand, driven by AI, data centers, and the electrification of transport and heating. At the same time, the global energy market is shifting toward a period of abundance.

AI, data centres and electrification are now the key drivers of energy demand growth. They demand security and reliability of supplies. We must deliver these with what we have today while we build what we need for the future.

In our region and in Cyprus, electricity demand is also driven by the increasing needs for desalination.

But for industry to remain competitive, electrification must be “beneficial”, by improving efficiency while lowering costs.

With increasing electrification, power grids have become the primary bottleneck for the energy transition, with more renewable capacity now “stuck in the queue” than currently exists on the global grid. Increasingly, long-duration storage is becoming essential to manage the volatility of an electrified system. 

The speed of electrification for transport and heat is “likely to catch people out” -including Cyprus- because it does not fit standard energy growth assumptions.

Energy security

The rise of “transactional geopolitics” and the need to ensure energy security is forcing a move toward building energy alliances among “reliable partners” rather than relying on globalized commodity markets.

To manage the “disorder,” IE Week put forward a pragmatic re-engagement with traditional, but stable, energy sources – nuclear and natural gas.

It addressed the emerging “second nuclear era,” focusing on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) to provide carbon-free, secure baseload power, especially for AI and data centers and heavy industry.

The conference also repositioned natural gas and LNG not just as “bridge fuels” but as permanent, dispatchable components of a secure electricity grid.

In addition to these, energy security requires grid upgrading and optimization and storage, as well as demand flexibility. A combination of these factors is essential to providing resilient, reliable and affordable energy.

Dr Charles Ellinas, @CharlesEllinas

Councilor, Atlantic Council