Three blind men and an elephant: The case of energy indices to measure energy security and energy sustainability

A large number of indices claim to quantify the performance of a country in attaining the goal of energy security and energy sustainability. The paper compares three different indices, viz., ‘Energy Sustainability Index’, ‘International Index of Energy Security Risk’ and ‘Energy Architecture Performance Index’ along with their variants to examine if they provide consistent results for various countries. A comparative assessment reveals that the three indices provide different country rankings, which are inconsistent. This situation is akin to three blind men groping the elephant with each one measuring a different part of the body and asserting that only their assessment is true. Further analysis reveals that countries which rank in the top of the list of different indices are insensitive to differences in construction of the index and it can be inferred that they have robust energy systems, which partly resolves the conflict. However, much more needs to be done, to examine energy security and energy sustainability of a country with other relevant tools. It may therefore be concluded that while the country ranking from the individual indices may be correct, basing the assessment of a country's performance, on the score obtained in one specific study may not be accurate. •14 variants of three different energy indexes are compared for 10 countries.•Different indexes provide different country scores, which are sometimes inconsistent.•Minor variations in indicators and their weights can change a country's relative ranking.•India shows a large variation in the country scores across indexes.•One index may not be accurate and a cross-index assessment has added value.