Uneven legs in the ‘Energy Trilemma’ … as presented at the 2017 CEC ACES

Here’s one of a couple of (very back-dated and back-dated) articles with reference to the CEC’s 2017 version of their ACES:

• which (back then) was held at the Sydney Hilton.
• and where I was invited to present this ‘Forecast, of sorts, for the National Electricity Market’ …albeit that I’m sure the CEC fold did not anticipate just what I turned out to talk about.

Whilst that article was one actually published at the time, this article is one of a number that are published much later (in 2026) but back-dated to the date of the presentation so readers:

• can read more in the context of later developments
• especially in relation to the growing ‘2026 Energy Security Concerns with the War in the Middle East’.

In this article, I’m simply going to add in two slides from my presentation back on 18th July 2017 without any more recent commentary.  The images probably explain enough about what the message was, back in 2017.

First there was this picture of ‘uneven legs’ on the stool (apologies for my graphics ability – then, and still now) , representing a priority order for the 3 legs of the trilemma:

As shown there:

• Priority 1 = Security of Supply
• so long as that is secured, then Priority 2 = Affordability
• so long as that is secured, then Priority 3 = Emissions Reduction

… which was followed by this slide that spoke to some of the other comments at the time that reinforced that order of priority.