The World Economic Forum in collaboration with Accenture recently released its year 2023 edition of the Energy Transition Index “Fostering Effective Energy Transition”. The Energy Transition Index (ETI) mainly aims at measuring the performance of energy systems and readiness for energy transition across 180 countries around the world. The report commented that over the past decade, energy transition scores improved by 10%, buoyed by a 19% increase in transition readiness and a 6% rise in system performance scores, yet added that this growth was subdued over the last three years, due to the recurrent geopolitical, health and economic shocks, with low-income countries being the most affected. The report stressed on the importance of accelerating the transition towards sustainable energies.

On the rankings front, Nordic countries occupied the first four positions in the 2023 ETI, with Sweden coming in first with a score of 78.5, scoring 81.0 in system performance and 74.8 in transition readiness, registering as such a 6.47 point improvement on its 2014 score. Denmark came in second with an ETI score of 76.1 (73.7 in system performance, 79.8 in transition readiness and a 3.68 improvement on the 2014 ETI score), followed by Norway with a score of 73.7 (77.3, 68.3 and a 2.99 point improvement), Finland with a score of 72.8 (68.9, 78.6, 9.70 points improvement). Switzerland was the only non-Nordic country in the top 5 with a score of 72.4 (75.7 in system performance, 67.4 in transition readiness and a 6.21 point improvement on its 2014 score).

Regionally, Morocco ranked first and 56^th globally with an ETI score of 55.6 (60.7 in system performance, 48.1 in transition readiness and a 5.64 points improvement on its 2014 score). Morocco was followed by Saudi Arabia which ranked 57^th globally with a score of 55.3 (62.0 in system performance, 45.3 in transition readiness and a 5.33 points improvement on its 2014 score) and Qatar which ranked 59^th globally with a score of 55.0 (58.2 in system performance, 50.2 in transition readiness and some 2.58 point improvement on its 2014 score).

Locally, Lebanon came in 112^th globally and 12^th regionally with an ETI score of 45.2, registering 50.1 in terms of system performance and 37.9 in terms of transition readiness, improving by 2.44 points since the year 2014. In more details, the report pointed out that Lebanon registered a negative performance in terms of energy intensity, a slow progress (lower than the 33^rd percentile) in terms of CO₂ intensity, medium progress (between 33^rd the and 67^th the percentile) in terms of share of electricity and renewable capacity, and fast progress (higher than the 67^th percentile) in terms of CO₂ per capita.