Assessment of energy security and low carbon society scenarios in Thailand and Sri Lanka

The term energy security has permeated itself into the energy landscape rapidly in the last decade due to the imminent threat of scarcity of conventional energy supply. Low carbon society (LCS) planning has become the key phrase in the fight to mitigate climate change. This paper attempts to analyse the effect of the reduction of CO₂ emissions from the power sector on the energy security of Thailand and Sri Lanka. Both countries have been modeled using a bottom-up integer programming based optimization model called “Model for Energy Supply Strategy Alternatives and their General Environmental Impacts” (MESSAGE). Thailand and Sri Lanka have been modeled as individual single region case studies with five scenarios each, with mitigation of CO₂ emissions from the power sector modeled with the reduction of 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% in comparison to the Reference scenario. In this paper, energy security is measured using three main themes; namely oil security, gas security and sustainability. Results of the assessment indicate that whilst oil security and gas security are not significantly affected by the low carbon policies implemented, sustainability of the energy sector is improved for the case of Thailand, while the same scenarios have significant beneficial impacts on both the themes of oil security and sustainability for the case of Sri Lanka.