E Energy Security and Sustainable Development Reza Hafezi 1 and Mohammad Alipour 2 1 Futures Studies Research Group, National Research Institute for Science Policy (NRISP), Tehran, Iran 2 School of Engineering and Built Environment, Griffith University, Southport, QLD, Australia Definitions Energy security means to guarantee that vital future energy needs can be met and appropriate energy level can be maintained to supply domestic needs under economically acceptable conditions. From a more comprehensive perspective, energy security strives to ensure that strategic energy reserves are approaching an adequate volume. On the other hand, sustainable development defines as to keep society in its way toward devel- opment with its environmental limits over the long term. Managing and guarantying energy security is a vital action to sustain the develop- ment process over time. Introduction The modern world challenges introduce various potential complications to the early simple defini- tion of sustainable development. The goals are multidimensional, raising the issue of how to balance objectives and how to judge success or failure (Sen 2013). For example, from the envi- ronmental perspective as a key topic in the global discourse, what if the provision of adequate energy supplies and distribution network devel- opment appears to require modifications in land use which will threaten biodiversity? From the social angle, nonpolluting energy sources are more expensive compared to fossil fuel resources, resulting in an increased burden on the poor since changes will represent a large portion of daily expenditure. This part of the encyclopedia is aimed to provide a more detailed view of a chal- lenging combination: (1) energy security as a quality to which decision-makers attempt to guar- antee at the standard level and (2) achieving sus- tainability in development. Energy has influenced, governed, and even controlled technological progress throughout human history. It is also the source of economic growth, the basis of technological innovation and political controversy, and the core of an epochal challenge to our global environment (Pascual and Elkind 2010; Hafezi et al. 2019). Energy sources are known as civilization and urbaniza- tion propellant, and as Smil noted, energy is critical to guarantee long-run economic growth and development (Smil 2005). Even, the first industrial revolution is a glass crystal example of how energy keeps economic development engine on (Fouquet 2008; Ayres and Warr 2010). © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. Leal Filho et al. (eds.), Affordable and Clean Energy , Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71057-0_103-1