Why the EU wants Nato’s help to protect its wind turbines
Hawkish
Belgium and Nato are leading a charge to better defend Europe’s critical energy infrastructure against malign interference, writes Alice Hancock.
Context: The explosion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, sightings of Russian boats near wind farms off the Dutch coast and scares around oil rigs have heightened fears that Moscow or other unfriendly actors could sabotage EU energy infrastructure.
Officials are concerned that any threats could leave a region already vulnerable to energy supply shocks more exposed, particularly as governments push to expand offshore wind farms in the North and Baltic seas.
Defending that infrastructure had become “a geopolitical, security and also an economic imperative”, said Tinne van der Straeten, the Belgian energy minister who chaired a closed-door lunch with her fellow EU ministers and Nato officials yesterday. “Close co-operation is absolutely needed.”
The plan is for developers of wind farms, subsea cables and gas pipelines to share more data — including video footage and information collected by sensors — with military agencies.
The key issues are establishing what the major threats to energy infrastructure are, what can be done about it and how sensitive data can be shared in real time.
A person familiar with the discussions said that meetings to establish data-sharing networks were under way, along with efforts to develop artificial intelligence technology that would evaluate satellite data as well as input from drones and electronic sensors — of which offshore wind turbines can have up to 300.
Belgium could become the first country to formalise this, based on proposals for the auctions of contracts for its new North Sea energy hub, an artificial island nicknamed Princess Elizabeth.
The plans come after Belgium, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway last week signed a declaration to share more information about protecting critical assets.
Though developers are increasingly conscious of the risks, shielding the new infrastructure won’t be straightforward.
Wind turbines above the water are easier to protect than subsea pipelines and cables, but new technologies such as distributed acoustic sensing, which allows continuous monitoring along cables, can tell “if a vessel is dropping anchor on the seabed”, according to Giles Dickson, chief executive of the industry body WindEurope.
More off-kilter ways to protect power generators include sensors with small calibre guns to fire on malicious operators, putting up nets to catch drones — or even using hawks to disable them.