Measuring resilience in electricity generation: An empirical analysis

Carbon constraints will act as a significant fuel shock for electricity generation. This paper seeks to use previous fuel shocks (the 1970s oil price crises and the global surge in energy demand that started in 2003) as the context for analysing the adaptive capacity of electricity generation to large fuel shocks. Resilience is the framework for analysis and the metrics analysed are based on the characteristics of resilience; diversity, spare capacity and organisational structure. This approach differs from current energy resilience research in its pursuit of empirical evidence for the relevance of metrics. The findings indicate that spare capacity is the most important metric for predicting favourable outcomes but diversity also plays a role.