The ETI 2024 framework offers a comprehensive assessment of countries’ energy systems with a consistent methodology, allowing decisionmakers to compare and track progress.

Decision-makers are confronted with two critical questions in the energy transition: what is needed to accelerate improvements in countries’ energy systems, and how can the right conditions be established to capitalize on opportunities arising from the transition? Addressing these questions necessitates a transparent fact base to help decision-makers understand and navigate the complexities inherent in the energy transition.

The Energy Transition Index (ETI), which is an evolution of 14 years of country-level energy system benchmarking, provides a data-driven framework to foster understanding of the performance and readiness of global energy systems for the transition. The ETI covers 120 countries in terms of their current energy system performance on equity, sustainability, and security and readiness of the enabling environment on policies and regulatory framework, infrastructure, innovation, education and human capital, and finance and investment (Figure 2).

A county’s final ETI score is a composite of its scores on the two sub-indices of system performance and transition readiness, weighted at 60% and 40%, respectively. System performance is equally weighted across equity, security and sustainability. Transition readiness is split into two groups: core enablers and enabling factors. Core enablers include regulations and political commitment, and finance and investment. Enabling factors include innovation, infrastructure, and education and human capital.

Figure 2: Energy Transition Index framework

The assessment of a country’s energy system performance revolves around three imperatives:

A country’s progress in energy transition is determined by its transition readiness – i.e. the extent to which a robust enabling environment can be created. The core components are characterized by a strong policy and regulatory framework and the ability to attract and deploy capital on a large scale. An investment climate characterized by a low cost of capital, domestic market liquidity and capital availability, and attractiveness to foreign direct investment is vital for financing the energy transition. Key factors like a skilled workforce, innovation and robust infrastructure are also integral to this framework.

Countries are scored across 46 indicators (Appendix A1) covering the most important aspects across these dimensions of the energy transition. The ETI adopts a minimum-maximum method to normalize indicator scores on a scale from 0 to 100, where a score of 100 signifies the highest global performance on each indicator. Additionally, external factors such as commodity market fluctuations, geopolitics, international climate change action and financial market conditions may impact certain dimensions of a country’s score. Therefore, it is important to interpret country rankings within the context of each country’s unique circumstances rather than viewing them as a definitive measure of energy transition progress.