When Oliver Dowden announced the release of the 2023 edition of the UK’s National Risk Register, he chose to do so whilst visiting Hartlepool to promote the construction of a massive offshore windfarm on Dogger Bank. I remember it well, because I reported it at the time. And I remember Dowden saying, “The first duty of government is to keep people safe”, before adding that the risk register, “is giving more information than ever before about the risks facing this country, whether it’s from cyber, whether it’s from energy resilience, which is why I am here today, where we are building the world’s largest offshore wind factory facility.” And I remember thinking, how will placing the nation’s energy generation infrastructure out in the middle of the sea, connected to our shores using a highly vulnerable network of communications and energy transmission cables, ensure our energy resilience?

Fast forward to a new government, and we see Ed Miliband launching GB Energy whilst heralding his new era of resilience, one that will “get Putin’s boot off the UK’s throat”. The argument is that in times of increased tension when Russia could halt supply of its gas, the UK, with its renewables, would be economically immune to the fallout. This equates to energy resilience. Why? ‘Cos there ain’t nothing that Vlad can do that can impact the energy resilience of a country so heavily dependent upon unguarded wind turbines scattered across the North Sea.

This small insight into the trademark madness that substitutes for Ed and Oliver’ cognitive powers is well worth expanding upon. So let me take just a few moments of your day to reflect upon what Vlad can do — and what he actually is doing — with his size ten boots firmly pressing upon the UK’s beautifully exposed throat.

The first thing that needs to be acknowledged is that, despite Ed’s outward confidence, security agencies who are closely observing developments are deeply alarmed by what they see. This is particularly true with respect to Nordic countries. In January this year, NATO countries met in Helsinki, looking to boost security following the suspected sabotage of undersea cables, widely blamed on Russia. Norway was particularly vocal in its warnings. The head of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST), Beate Gangas, said, “As for state actors, we expect Russia to remain the main security threat in Norway”. This threat extends to all aspects of Norwegian infrastructure, but energy infrastructure is a particular worry. And the Norwegians don’t expect to have to wait too long. In their latest annual report, the PST stated, “Norwegian-owned energy infrastructure may also be a target for sabotage in the year ahead.”

Meanwhile, the Finnish coastguard has found itself with more than enough on its plate trying to guard against acts of sabotage in the Gulf of Finland. In total, the Baltic Sea has registered at least six suspected sabotage incidents since 2022, with 11 known undersea cables taken out since 2023.

Denmark security agencies are also wise to the problem. Danish broadcaster DR cites Danish counterintelligence chief Anders Henriksen from the Danish Police Intelligence Service (PET) as claiming that “Moscow is planning sabotage in Scandinavian countries, while also collecting intelligence to cut power and data cables across the Atlantic and the rest of Europe in case of an escalation.” Henriksen adds that, in the event of a conflict with the West, “they [Russia] are ready and know where to intervene if they want to paralyze Danish society”.

Such are the concerns in Sweden that it has scrapped plans for 13 windfarms over Russia security fears. In this instance the concern was not just a question of windfarm vulnerability but also the adverse impact on national defence resulting from the very presence of such windfarms. In announcing the cancellations, the country’s defence minister, Pål Jonson, said, “The government believes that it would lead to unacceptable consequences for Sweden’s defence to build the current projects in the Baltic Sea area”. The problem, according to Jonson, is that radar clutter and acoustic interference caused by the turbines could affect Sweden’s defence capabilities, making it harder to detect submarines and possible attacks from the air if war broke out.

Further south, on the North Sea coast, the Dutch are so concerned that they have announced that they are to enlist additional personnel and equipment from private companies to strengthen security in its part of the North Sea. This decision came after last year’s discovery by the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD that infrastructure, including their windfarms, had been the target of Russian sabotage activities. A ministry spokesperson stated, “This measure is intended to bridge the gap until two new multifunctional support vessels can be deployed into the navy, expected in 2026″.

But what of the UK? Well we have to thank our Nordic neighbours for drawing our attention to the recent suspicious activities of the Russian vessel, the Admiral Vladimirsky. Ostensibly an Expeditionary Oceanographic Ship, it recently spent an awful long time visiting and loitering at a wide selection of windfarms off the Danish and UK coastlines. Its purposes can only be guessed at, but at least one expert, the former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord West, has warned that sleeper explosives may already be planted on critical infrastructure on the seabed. If true, then that does not say a great deal for the degree of energy resilience we can expect from our offshore wind investments.

In addition to concerns regarding undersea attack, we should not be too complacent regarding the damage that a few well-placed thermobaric airburst weapons could wreak on your average windfarm. These could be small but many in number, as in a coordinated drone attack. Alternatively, they could be much more substantial, such as Russia’s Father of All Bombs, which would be more than capable of taking out the mother of all turbines. Failing that, a couple of judiciously aimed tactical nuclear airbursts should do the trick.

Much is made of a potential attack on home soil, but it is sobering to consider that the UK could be brought to its knees with what would be a relatively easy tactical operation aimed at our offshore assets. It has been claimed that experience in Ukraine has shown that wind turbines are actually more resistant to such attacks than other power-generating installations. Others will point out that the decentralised nature of wind power renders it less vulnerable to attack when compared to other forms of energy generation. But I suspect that this way of thinking is bound to lead to overconfidence. In my mind the vulnerability is all too obvious.

So what can we do about it? Well, we could put an entry in our National Risk Register. Dowden certainly placed great store in such risk-listing bureaucracy. Remember how he had said that having the register meant we were prepared for anything? And if that doesn’t work, we could always fall back on a good regulatory framework. Putin may have his weaponry and a track record of targeting energy infrastructure as a primary tactic, but we have ISO 3100 and IEC 62443, not to mention the promise of forthcoming legislation such as the ‘Network and Information Security 2’ (NIS2) Directive as well as the EU’s ‘Directive on the Resilience of Critical Entities’. Unless he has some pretty nifty counter-legislation up his sleeve, Putin must be shaking in his boots.

The reality is that once one has committed to placing one’s ‘critical entities’ in the North Sea, there is no way of guaranteeing protection from cyberattack, underwater sabotage and even conventional aerial attack. Of course, this is as true for fossil fuel technologies as it is for renewables, so this isn’t a newly introduced vulnerability. But that’s not the point. The real issue here is the government’s fantasy that the question of energy resilience is in any way answered by a transition to renewables. The fact that politicians across the board have been pushing this line as a major selling point further illustrates just how disingenuous the political class has been throughout the campaign for Net Zero. Unless I’m very much mistaken — or unless the word ‘resilience’ has been redefined recently — the UK’s energy supply is destined to become about as resilient as… Well let’s say, Heathrow airport’s.