BARRIERS TO SUSTAINING ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENERGY SECURITY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The uptake and investment in renewable and other less carbon intensive energy sources including the impact of energy efficiency have not shown the required consistency to transform our carbon-intensive energy generation to mitigate climate change. This lack of consistency is due to climate change efforts having to work through multiple barriers in various dimensions of our created economic world with its political and social dynamics. Some climate change efforts overcome these barriers and some efforts are not being realised due to their inability to move past the barriers. These barriers exist in greater measure for developing economies of the world than in developed economies largely due to the dynamics of the political, technological and financial dimensions. Understanding the origins of these barriers is necessary to understand the current barriers well enough to find ways to overcome them. This paper investigates the barriers to energy efficiency and energy security in developing countries, contextualising their origins and outlinin g the required focus to overcome the barriers.