Energy Strategy and Policy Development Process

Introduction

Many factors, including population increase, economic growth, and lifestyle changes accelerated energy demand around the globe. From another attitude, the burning of fossil fuels continued for decades affected health and environment. Historically, while energy provided by biomass proved inadequate to supply the growing economies, people turned to hydropower later to coal and then to oil, natural gas, and nuclear power. The twenty-first century is the time for the next transition from fossil fuels towards renewable energy, and climate change is one of the critical driving forces (Matin Ibrahimi et al., 2019). Global average solar radiation per square meter per year can provide the same amount of energy as a barrel of oil, 200 kg of coal, or 140 m3 of natural gas. Recent cost reduction and progress in renewable energy technologies and efficiency as well as implementing policies increased attractions as an alternative to conventional energy sources (Ibrahimi et al., n.d.). According to the report (Simsek et al., 2019), in 2017, nearly 85% of global energy consumption or demand is reported from fossil fuels, including oil, coal, and gas.

Today, introducing various clean energy resources without greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the umbrella of smart and robust technologies creates several opportunities for people and their environment. Energy sectors particularly in the electric power system, for instance, the optimal involvement of clean energy resources such as wind and solar, are studied and proved to be encouraging to mitigate the GHG emission crisis and a multi-dimensional contribution on techno-economic growth as well (Ahmadi, Lotfy, Danish, et al., 2019; Ahmadi, Lotfy, Shigenobu, et al., 2019). Based on statistics’ findings, the people accessing modern forms of energy in developing countries generally have higher economic and educational opportunities and improved health care services. Therefore, energy is correlated to both economic and social factors such as health care, enhancement of education and knowledge, accessible and clean water, communication services and further. It is not an easy job defining the energy in particular, precise and satisfactory manner to show and indicate its importance to develop societies containing all related activities within them. Energy respect for other elements and aspects in a society has its complexity because of the socioeconomic differentiation. Therefore, making a conceptual framework for energy counts as a critical point and ingredient to respond to the needs of society (Guía Práctica sobre, 2016).

Energy policy is defined as actions in which governments deploy to affect the energy demand and supply (Marcus, 1992). Therefore, these actions pave the way for the governments to cope with supplying energy challenges as well as manipulating energy consumption and economic growth. Establishing energy policy process requires a preliminary consideration in terms of review and assessment. As a fact, energy policy process is the first endeavor that originates a structural theme for energy policy development. The review stage of policy process includes distinguished segments that can be expounded in terms of characterization and weighting value for decision-making (Danish et al., 2019b). These segments depend on policy scale and objectives such as supply and demand, access, sectors, options, renewable energy potential, economy, customers, targets, competitions, and many more characteristics (Danish & Senjyu, 2020; Simsek et al., 2019). Identification and decision-making on importance of these segments are the main points of review process. However, energy policy process review is linked with management principles, while undiscipline analysis can lead to shortcomings in an in-depth analysis (Danish et al., 2018).

Review of a policy process is different from a policy review, which is conducted initially at the initiation and implementation phases, respectively. However, policy review can be assessed at any time for any phase apart from limitations. Authors in (Browne et al., 2018) categorized policy review into main three subjects: traditional approaches, mainstream approaches, and interpretive approaches. Traditional approaches deal with best solution based on objective analysis that focuses on facts and realities. Mainstream approaches mainly rely on the influence of policy actors; and concentrate on values, pressures, politics, trends, etc. And interpretive approaches solve problems with an overall solution that mainly provide descriptive solutions for problems.