On benefits and perspectives of applying network theory to energy systems

While “the energy issue” is rising in the agenda of politics, the awareness that complexity is a main and distinctive feature of energy systems is becoming dominant in the scientific milieu. There is a trend in nature, from the beginning of life to higher organism, that justify the hypothesis that evolution tends to promote higher complexity and higher energy density, throughout higher thermodynamic efficiency. An ever growing energy trend that is perpetuated in human made systems, as society and economy development clearly explain. Some scientist claim this is a universal tendency common to any energy systems. Is therefore the higher efficiency-higher complexity-higher energy consumption an inescapable drift? Can economic growth and development exists out of energy growth? Crucial questions of the like pave the way of the current debate over the “energy issue” and cannot be answered without tackling the broader question of complex systems’ evolution. Two main approaches over complexity studies are emerging in science: Non-linear Dynamics and Network Theory. Since the birth, more than two centuries ago, of Graph Theory as a mathematical approach to networks, network theory has developed dramatically in the last decades in virtue of an extraordinary amount of data available and computational tools, broad up by information technologies. However, so far, Network Theory has seldom tackled energy systems. In this article we aim at advocating the need for a Network Theory-based theoretical framework, directed at interpreting energy systems’. Two main supportive arguments will be advanced and for each argument, thrives and shortcomings will be considered. One argument will concern the methodological aspects descending from the to the two above mentioned approaches on complexity. It will be illustrated how network theory has the indisputable advantage of considering changes that simultaneously take place in any level or any region of the entire systems. Furthermore, in Network Theory, differently from approaches based on dynamics though non-linear, space has not be assumed invariant. The second argument proposed concerns some practical and more applicative aspects of network theory.