ORCID

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Recent energy supply disruptions have prompted some governments to deploy demand-side measures as emergency responses. These crises reveal that systems built on high and inflexible energy and material demand are structurally exposed to shocks. This vulnerability is rooted in earlier political, infrastructural, and economic choices that locked societies into resource-intensive mobility, housing, and production. Crises are not only moments requiring rapid response; they are junctures where structural weaknesses become available for reform. We argue that demand-side measures are essential for reducing the immediate pain of crises and for reconfiguring provisioning systems toward lasting resilience. Drawing on examples spanning oil, electricity, buildings, and transport across multiple geographies, we document a consistent pattern: demand adjusts under crisis pressure, but only structural embedding produces lasting gains in energy security, affordability, health, and wellbeing. Japan’s post-Fukushima Setsuden campaign achieved approximately 15% electricity savings sustained over several years; India’s UJALA programme replaced 360 million lightbulbs nationwide. Persistence depended on structural policy follow-through, not crisis urgency alone. Without institutionalizing demand-side approaches in crisis preparedness frameworks, each successive shock will be met with the same supply-side reflexes, missing the opportunity for the structural change that would make societies genuinely less vulnerable to the next one.

Publication Date

2026-08-18

Publication Title

Environmental Research: Energy

Volume

3

Issue

3

Deposit Date

2026-09-08

Funding

We acknowledge EDITS (EDITS-2361–619–0292) project, which is coordinated by RITE and IIASA, funded by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), Japan. C.Z., S.P., and J.M gratefully acknowledge funding by Austrian Science Fund (FWF), project REMASS, doi: https://doi.org/10.55776/EFP5. S.N. acknowledges support by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE as part of the SWICE project. J.T. acknowledges funding by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), project EnSu (01UU2004B), FONA SÖF programme. F.W. acknowledges funding by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), project EnSu (01UU2004A), FONA SÖF programme. E.V. gratefully acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Project 2D4D Disruptive Digitalization for Decarbonization, Grant Agreement No 853487). C.Z.-Z. acknowledges funding by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) within the project EnSu (01UU2004C), FONA SÖF programme. The authors thank Charlie Wilson for engaging discussions on previous drafts and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments during the revision process.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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