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, during which 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’s 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 31000 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.

19 Comments

  1. In my area (flood hydrology), the word “resilient” relates to the speed of the clean-up and repair operations after the event, there being other words like “resistance” for protection or prevention of the event in the first place. Having said that I suspect that the ministers were using it loosely to imply more the latter.

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  2. Max,

    You are quite right. Resilience implies a capacity for recovery. The politicians do seem to use the word more losely.

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  4. Thank you John: most interesting, useful (I’ll touch on your comments in my next update of my The Case Against Net Zero essay) – and very worrying.

    Liked by 2 people

  5. Thank you John,

    As you are aware, I have posted endless comments about this at Cliscep, but it’s good to have the details drawn together neatly in one place. If we can do it, why can’t the hundreds of civil servants working for the Department for Energy Security (sic) and Net Zero?

    Liked by 2 people

  6. So, what are we swapping here, by going all out for Mad Ed’s ‘home grown clean energy’? Dependence upon the Russian tyrant’s gas (we never were, Europe was) for dependence upon weather-dependent North Sea wind turbines, which it now seems are wide open to sabotage by the same despicable Russian tyrant? Is that what we’re trading? Putin’s got it in for us, we’re told, as Miliband destroys what’s left of our North Sea gas and oil industry – which Putin in his wisdom never thought to destroy or even threaten – plus bans fracking “for good.” Sorry, who’s got it in for us again? Then there’s the Nordstream pipelines, which did transport Russian gas in huge quantities to Germany and the rest of Europe (but not to Britain) and which were blown up – but not by Putin, as suggested by the Western media, but by that other well known enemy of the West, Biden, who happened to be President of the United States at the time. But yeah, Putin’s gonna blow up our windmills and sever the undersea cables so we can’t function as a prosperous, energy rich, independent nation. Or, maybe . . . . . if someone starts blowing up our offshore turbines soon, the UK will be forced to abandon its Net Zero nonsensical dream and maybe, just maybe, we can then begin to rebuild our economy and start functioning once again as a prosperous, energy rich, independent nation. And where does all this madness lead to? War, War, War is where it leads. Because obviously, we’ll have to invade Russia if Putin starts knocking off our precious windmills, or even sailing around them with intent. Cos we all know what he’s up to. Maybe that was the real destination after all.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Wind turbines spread out over wind farm, but farm’s cables brought together for transmission by single 2-core DC cable to land? That makes for a single point of vulnerability – oops! Regards, John C.

    Liked by 4 people

  8. Jaime,

    I agree with most of that, but would just caution that we don’t know who blew up NordStream. We did a lot of speculating at Cliscep at the time when it happened, and for various different reasons it seems that it could have been carried out by any one of several countries. I can’t see why Putin would have done it, unless he is even madder than I fear, since it would an act of self-harm by Russia, which was on a nice big earner with those gas sales. But equally I can’t see why Biden would have ordered it. My money’s on Ukraine, and if they did it I wouldn’t blame them. But the bottom line is – who knows?

    However, back to the point of John’s article, isn’t it extraordinary how Miliband (and his government colleagues) constantly harp on about how ditching fossil fuels (or, at least, ditching UK-sourced fossil fuels) will increase our energy security (self-evidently it won’t, it will do the opposite), while building lots of offshore wind turbines and making us increasingly reliant on undersea cables and interconnectors will improve our energy security? Again, self-evidently, it will do the opposite. I know you (Jaime) often speculate that people like Miliband, are malign, deliberately undermining the country. Given his behaviour, that’s certainly a plausible interpretation of events. Another, which I worry about, is that he is is mad (in the way that zealots can be mad), inasmuch as I fear he actually believes the nonsense that comes out of his mouth, despite increasing volumes of evidence suggesting that it is indeed nonsense.

    In terms of insisting on doubling down on a policy which is causing manifest harm, what’s the difference between Miliband and Trump?

    Liked by 2 people

  9. Ray,

    “Very helpfully we provide accurate mapping of all the cable links to make it easy for any enemy.”

    Having your enemy know the coordinates of all your ‘critical entities’ is certainly a drawback.  But not to worry, because NATO has now set up a new Maritime Centre for Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure at their Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) headquarters in Northwood. That would be:

    HQ Allied Maritime Command

    Northwood HQ, Atlantic Building

    Sandy Lane, Northwood HA6 3HP

    United Kingdom

    Coordinates:  51°37′10″N 000°24′34″W

    https://mc.nato.int/media-centre/news/2024/nato-officially-launches-new-nmcscui

    Liked by 3 people

  10. An extract from the Dieter Helm article referred to elsewhere:

    From a defence perspective, the North Sea is a nightmare. It presents an aggressor with a cornucopia of targets, and targets that are high value because they can lead to massive consequences if damaged and destroyed. Imagine a swarm of drones (the sort familiar in Ukraine) directed at the offshore wind farms. Each wind turbine is a small generator, so the cost of defending each relative to its value is very high. A swarm of drones only has to get some of them. Imagine an aggressor wanting to disable the British economy. Take out the Norwegian gas pipeline and there is a good chance the lights go out. Take out the electricity interconnectors in, say, January or February in line with a weather forecast for low winds, cold temperatures and dark skies; again, there is a good chance that the lights go out. Now go for the LNG terminals.

    All of this is before going to the cyber infrastructure. Cutting wires and cables has been demonstrated to be very easy. Nordstream was blown up. Baltic communications cables and energy links have been cut – in the case of Sweden and Finland, in punishment for joining NATO.

    As I said above – very worrying.

    Liked by 4 people

  11. If Russian drones take out windmills at sea, this government will probably pay the wind farm operators a curtailment subsidy for the time they are out of operation!

    Liked by 1 person

  12. John – great post that again points out UK government’s Idea of risk is farcical.

    The link Ray gave above is very detailed with tick box options on top right to show what infrastructure you want to see (or potentially disrupt if so inclined, as Ray notes).

    Liked by 1 person

  13. PS – forget to thank John for the chuckle at his “(MARCOM)” comment. For some reason “Loose lips sink ships” from WW2 springs to mind, but in this new information age it needs updating.

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  14. “Almost 10pc of North Sea could be taken up by wind farms”

    EDP reports on DNV’s “North Sea Forecast.”

    Infrastructure will in total claim almost 25pc of shallower areas between two and 50km from the shore.

    The accompanying map is quite horrifying. Security is mentioned, but I don’t know what DNV says about it. Their report can be found here. I haven’t downloaded it yet. The need to register to read something I might glance at for <5 minutes is deterring me. Maybe later.

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  17. “‘Invasion’ barges, subsea cable cutters and surprise naval drills: how China is testing Donald Trump

    China has been flexing its maritime muscle in the Indo-Pacific – moves that pose a challenge for the US president”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/14/china-taiwan-military-drills-trump-barges-asia-pacific-security

    …In the space of just five weeks, China held live-fire drills on the doorsteps of Australia, Taiwan and Vietnam. It tested new landing barges on ships that could facilitate an amphibious assault on Taiwan. And it unveiled deep-sea cable cutters with the ability to switch off another country’s internet access – a tool no other nation admits to having.…

    Why do these articles talk only of China? Why do they talk only of internet cables? We in the UK have made ourselves hugely vulnerable to an increasingly hostile Russia under Putin, who might well think it’s a great idea to cut the interconnectors between the UK and the European mainland, and also the various electricity cables under the sea, whether such as those between Shetland and the mainland or the many between offshore wind farms and the UK.

    However, the reference to China and its hostile intent is appropriate, inasmuch as the current UK government seems very keen to make us dependent on China for much of our infrastructure, including our energy infrastructure. It remains to be seen whether the government will grow up, wake up, and change course in the wake of the Scunthorpe debacle.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. Let’s not forget financial vulnerabilities……

    Orsted has decided to cancel the Hornsea 4 wind project. From Energy Voice:

    “Ørsted has announced it will discontinue construction on its Hornsea 4 offshore wind project in the UK, despite recently securing a Contract for Difference (CfD). The Danish developer said the 2.4 GW project has seen “several adverse developments” since securing a CfD in the sixth allocation around (AR6).

    These include increasing of supply chain costs, higher interest rates, and an increase in the risk to construct and operate Hornsea 4 on the planned timeline, Ørsted said.

    “In combination, these developments have increased the execution risk and deteriorated the value creation of the project,” the company added. As a result, Ørsted said it will stop further spend on Hornsea 4 and terminate the project’s supply chain contracts.”

    Write-off costs will be £400 – 500 million. The CfD was awarded at £59/MWh in 2012 prices – so about £80 – 90 in today’s money?

    The company’s turnover and profits were up substantially in 2024 so this does seem to be a purely value-driven decision. Will there be others following suit?

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