Demand-side action: an overlooked lever for Austria's energy security and resilience

Two companion studies just published in Environmental Research: Energy make the case that reshaping how much and how energy is used - not only diversifying supply - is central to lasting energy security and to overcoming crises.

The first, led by IIASA researcher and REMASS team member Caroline Zimm, looks at how measures across buildings, transport, and industry could strengthen Austria's resilience to energy-supply shocks, building on a systematic energy-security assessment approach the team helped develop for cross-country comparisons.

The second study, also led by Zimm with a wider international group of co-authors from the EDITS Network, draws on examples from oil, electricity, buildings, and transport across multiple countries. The team finds that while energy demand typically drops back under crisis pressure, it's only when governments embed these changes structurally into policy that the gains in energy security, affordability, health, and wellbeing actually last. Japan's post-Fukushima electricity-saving campaign and India's nationwide LED lightbulb rollout are cited as cases where sustained policy follow-through - not the urgency of the crisis itself - made the difference.

Read the full papers here: Leveraging demand-side potentials for energy security and resilience in Austria | Demand-side measures improve long-term resilience to supply shocks beyond emergencies