WASHINGTON, September 30, 2026 — NCEA introduces the Index of Leading Energy Indicators, a four-dimension tradeoff platform on published federal data, with the U.S. Energy Security Index as its first, of the four pillars, completed (projecting worsening security driven by critical minerals and cybersecurity risks). NCEA Energy Chat, a cited research assistant, is live. EMIT, a replacement-plant calculator, will follow.

Measuring the condition and direction of American’s energy system

The Index is intended to help policymakers and the public understand and evaluate how policy decisions impact energy systems. Designed to reveal the interrelated nature of energy security, affordability, reliability, and footprint, the Index will allow users to see future outcomes in all pillars when changes are made in a single pillar.

Each dimension draws on specifically identified federal and intergovernmental data series, including the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, ISO and RTO market operators, the International Energy Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. For each pillar, the indicators, sources and weights are published with the methodology for each, so a user of the index can understand how it was built.

The Security pillar was published in March as a full report with its methodology and technical appendix. The remaining three pillars follow a similar structure and are in development, as is the interactive dashboard that will let users adjust different dimensions of the energy system to better understand policy choices.

What the Security Index found

The U.S. Energy Security Index, introduced in "The Role of Energy in U.S. National Security" by NCEA scholars Iddo K. Wernick, PhD, and Stephen D. Eule, integrates 18 indicators across six groups to score geopolitical risk to the U.S. energy system from 1970 through 2025, with a forecast to 2035.

The Index reveals that the current overall security risk, while lower than recent decades, is trending toward increased risk over the next decade. This arises from new vulnerabilities in mineral supply chains, cybersecurity, and reduced strategic petroleum reserves.

Crude oil and natural gas accounted for 72 percent of the overall U.S. energy security exposure in 2010. By 2025 that share had fallen to 46 percent as the shale revolution cut import vulnerability and risk shifted toward minerals needed for building alternative energy systems.

Critical minerals are now the fastest-growing driver of energy security risk. Most projected supply growth for graphite and nickel, for example, is expected from China and Indonesia, and 45 to 75 percent of new supply for refined copper, lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements is expected from China.

U.S. energy security remains stronger than during the oil crises of the 1970s, but the nation is on track to erase most of the gains made since 2010 unless trends change.

Mark P. Mills, Executive Director, said, “There are many tools for visualizing energy data. We use and create those too. But the NCEA Index is a different beast. It incorporates expert-driven, qualitative analyses of the data, and weights them based on the realities of how energy is used. This illuminates real-world outcomes and will also, in due course, allow users to dynamically see the unavoidable inter-relationships, tradeoffs, amongst the key energy goals of improving affordability, security, reliability, and environmental footprints.”

EMIT, forthcoming

NCEA will follow the Index with EMIT, the Emissions-Megawatt Interchange Tool. It began as an exercise in asking if a coal plant is shut down, how many wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear reactors, or carbon-capture plants, would it take to replace what it produced?

A user chooses the retiring fuel, an emissions target in million metric tons of CO₂ and a grid reliability margin. EMIT returns plant counts for five different replacement technologies under two scenarios, one based on annual average generation and one on the peak month, with provisional assumptions labeled on screen until sourced data replaces them. The model was developed by NCEA scholar Steve Eule, formerly with Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, with the House of Representatives Science Committee, the Department of Energy, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global Energy Institute (GEI). The data pipeline was produced by NCEA Research Assistant, Parth S. Bajaj.

NCEA Energy Chat

NCEA Energy Chat lets readers explore NCEA's published research through plain-language questions. It finds relevant publications, surfaces connections across energy topics and links each answer back to the primary publications, footnotes and data behind it, so a user can inspect the source rather than take for granted the generated answer.

It is designed around a defined source collection. NCEA's research is identified separately from related media, outside articles and expert profiles, and the tool does not present general model knowledge or uncited web content as NCEA research. It can draw on current events for context. Where NCEA's research does not address a question, it says so, may offer a perspective grounded in NCEA's guiding principles, and points to related research or a nearby question the sources can answer. Reported answers are reviewed by people.

NCEA Energy Chat is available in the search panel on every page of energyanalytics.org and in its own window at https://energyanalytics.org/energy-chat.

“We see AI as an incredible accelerant. It streamlines access to information for our team and helps make repeatable processes more accessible and less time-consuming,” said Portia Roberts, NCEA’s Deputy Executive Director, adding, “It also makes information more easily available to policymakers, media, and the public, unearthing facts and ideas and encouraging engagement for deeper learning.”

How the tools are built

Each tool's page explains the division of labor between experts and AI. NCEA's fellows and analysts chose the dimensions, indicators, weights, assumptions and source collection, and they sign off on the updates. AI collects and normalizes the data, runs the arithmetic, drafts notes for review and composes answers from the sources it is given. It does not create the models or set NCEA's positions.

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Media contact: media@energyanalytics.org

Links:

Index of Leading Energy Indicators:  https://energyanalytics.org/energy-index

U.S. Energy Security Index:  https://energyanalytics.org/research/esi

EMIT: https://energyanalytics.org/emit

NCEA EnergyChat:  https://energyanalytics.org/energy-chat

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