Abstract: The renewed focus on energy security is driven, to some degree, by the soaring energy price and the increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Strengthening research on theories and methods of energy security is helpful not only in mastering the key elements and identify evolution trends of energy security, but also in laying a solid foundation for early warning and policy research.
This article summarized the theories, methods and major progress of energy security, and found out the following results. (1) The quantitative study on energy security of China is very limited. There are very few quantitative empirical studies and a lack of consensus on the conceptual framework and evaluation model of energy security. (2) International evaluation models are mostly based on Shannon-Wiener Index and Herfindahl- Hirschman Index. At present, more representative evaluation models of energy security are developed by Joint Energy Security of Supply Working Group (JESS), Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), International Energy Agency (IEA), The Asia Pacific Energy Research Centre. (3) Discussion and some perspectives in this paper imply that quantitative research on energy security should be improved from the aspects of temporal scale, spatial scale, contents, uncertainties and others.

Key words: energy security, major progress, methods, theories