Abstract
Offshore wind energy production has seen a significant expansion in recent years. With technologies rapidly improving and prices dropping, it is now one of the key instruments in the green energy transition. The implications of offshore wind farm expansion for maritime security and ocean governance have, so far, received sparse attention in the literature. This article offers one of the first thorough analyses of the security of offshore wind farms and related installations, such as underwater electricity cables, energy islands, and hydrogen plants. The technical vulnerabilities of wind farm systems is reviewed and threats from terrorism, crime and State hostilities, including physical and cyber risk scenarios, are discussed. The expansion of green offshore energy production must keep pace with the changing threat landscape that follows from it. Prospective solutions for the protection of wind farms systems, including surveillance, patrols and self-protection are discussed. The current repertoire of maritime security solutions is in many ways capable of dealing with the threats and risks effectively if adjusted accordingly. The analysis builds important new bridges between debates in energy security and maritime security, as well as the implications of climate change adaption and mitigation for security at sea.
Introduction: When Seapower Meets Wind Power*
Offshore wind energy production has seen a significant expansion in the past decade and has become one of the most important maritime activities. With technologies rapidly improving and prices dropping, offshore wind energy is now seen as one of the key instruments for the decarbonization of contemporary societies and economies. This expansion is expected to accelerate and plans indicate a multiplication of offshore installations. In consequence, energy supplies will increasingly become dependent on the sea, and a major transformation of marine environments is on the way. Regional seas with substantial wind energy potential such as the North Sea, the South China Sea, and the Philippine Sea will become new power houses. The coastlines and exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of countries such as Denmark, the United Kingdom, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines will substantially transform and become increasingly congested infrastructure zones raising new potential for conflicts between different users of the sea. These developments have consequences for maritime security, too. As energy security and maritime security become closely intertwined, wind farms might become potential targets, and there are substantial risks that the expansion of offshore installations could facilitate maritime—or “blue”—crimes of various sorts.1
However, the implications of offshore wind farm expansion for maritime security have, so far, received sparse attention in the literature. In this article we conduct one of the first thorough analyses of the security of offshore wind farms and related installations, such as underwater electricity cables, energy islands, and hydrogen plants. While there has been a recent surge of studies that investigate the safety and security of offshore energy,2 these focus on engineering and technical aspects, and neither discuss the full spectrum of threats from terrorism, crime and State hostilities, nor the regulatory and political environment in which solutions unfold.
Our analysis contributes to a number of currently ongoing discussions. Firstly, the role of wind farms in critical maritime infrastructure protection.3 Since the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022, a high level of political attention has been given to threats and risks to maritime infrastructure and how these might be better protected. However, this debate has mainly focused on fossil fuel platforms, pipelines, and data cables, as well as on ports and harbors. Although they are the future of energy production offshore, wind farm systems have not strongly featured so far.
Secondly, we contribute to the ongoing discussion on the relation between maritime security and climate change and the resulting shifts in the reorganization of the ocean. While it has often been noted that climate change has serious repercussions and consequences for maritime security, how such links manifest more concretely is often left unexplored. The majority of the debate points to challenges such as sea-level rise,4 or the changing patterns of blue crime that can be expected.5 Here we add an important additional factor to these analyses; that is, the consequences of climate change mitigation—the green energy transition—for maritime security and ocean governance.
The article begins with a brief introduction to the technical specificities of wind farms, and a short exploration of the range of global expansion plans and how these revise the strategic importance of particular regional seas. The parameters for maritime wind energy security that are set out in international law are briefly reviewed.
The risks and threats to wind farms and related infrastructure, drawing on frameworks of maritime security analysis, are investigated.6 Some of this discussion is speculative or hypothetical in the sense that current evidence for such threats is weak or not in the public domain. Consequently, much of the discussion is on potential threats and risks, rather than inferring from past incidents.
The final section comprises a discussion of prospective solutions for the protection of wind farms. The current repertoire of maritime security solutions in many ways is capable of dealing with the threats and risks effectively if adjusted accordingly. The article concludes with an outlook on the future of wind farm expansion and security in the light of current global political trends.
Wind Energy Systems: Components, Connections, and the Legal Regime
In order to understand the vulnerabilities of wind farms, their basic components must be understood as well as the legal regime under which they operate. While differing in design, contemporary wind farms are installed in territorial waters and EEZs with a preference for shallow waters and areas with high wind intensity.
The major design difference between systems is whether wind turbines are mounted on the ocean floor or are floating. Fixed installations are currently the most cost-effective means for wind energy production, but limited to shallow waters, usually to a depth of 80 meters. Floating wind farms are only anchored on the seabed and hence can be installed in much deeper waters. Floating platforms are more expensive to build and maintain and continue to be in an early adoption phase.
A contemporary wind farm is a complex system consisting of at least five main components: (1) the wind turbines that capture wind and transform it into energy, (2) array cables that connect the turbines to a substation, (3) offshore substations, where the electricity from turbines is brought together and converted into high voltage, (4) power cables through which electricity is transmitted to the land, and (5) onshore substations where the cables connect to electricity grids.
Each of these components is also networked to facilitate communication, monitoring and control across the system as a whole. Accordingly, wind farm power cables are also equipped with optical fiber connections, and so function as data cables too. Groups of wind turbines are generally linked together and to the substation by these cables in a string or “daisy chain” configuration.7 Substations host communication equipment to allow remote control through a grid owner control center. The substations of larger wind farms often also have their own control rooms as well as cabins for crews that conduct monitoring and maintenance. Wind farms also rely on supply and repair vessels. On average, wind farms are visited for inspection, maintenance, and repair three to four times per year.
Constructing wind farms usually entails a lengthy planning process to ensure their economic viability and to limit ecosystem impacts. Construction itself takes up to three years, depending on size and location. Wind turbines are built to last up to 25 years before they need to be replaced. Increasingly there are also other marine installations embedded and linked to large-scale wind farms. These include co-located aquaculture farms,8 as well as floating solar panels.9 Integrating other infrastructure into wind farms further enhances their overall complexity.
Ongoing Expansion and Energy Islands
Due to rapid advances in technology and dramatic reductions in cost, offshore wind is expanding and wind farms have been growing substantially in size. The main developments continue to be concentrated in the North Sea as well as in China, yet a growing number of emerging market economies are seizing the opportunities of low-cost offshore wind.10 Overall, the market is assumed to be growing by 24 percent annually.11
The currently largest farm, the Hornsea Two in the United Kingdom, is composed of 165 wind turbines, delivering 1.3 gigawatt capacity, while the largest wind farm under construction is almost three times this size. Expected to go on the grid in 2026, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm in the United Kingdom will operate with 277 turbines and has an expected capacity of 3.6 gigawatt— five percent of the UK’s electricity generating capacity.
Other plans go even further. In 2020, Denmark initiated plans for energy islands to be built up to 100 km (54 nautical miles) out at sea.12 The plan foresees building several artificial islands in the North Sea to provide for the substations, harbor and service facilities, which will allow for generating up to 10 gigawatts by 2040. Similar concepts for offshore energy islands are being developed in Belgium and India.
Part of these expansion plans are also considerations of how to deal with excess energy. One of the solutions is to connect a wind farm or energy island to the grids of several countries through subsea power cables. A growing transnational underwater electricity grid is therefore in development.13 The most important plans currently being pursued, foresee the use of excess energy to produce “green” hydrogen from seawater.14 Hydrogen in turn can be used to fuel industrial sectors which are difficult to electrify, such as shipping, chemical or steel industries. Hydrogen, likewise, can be used to produce electricity that provides redundancy at times when wind energy flows are too low to fulfill demands. Two concepts are currently under development for how to produce green hydrogen. In the first concept, a hydrogen plant is directly co-located with the wind farm offshore and the gas transported via an underwater pipeline. In the second concept, excess electricity is transmitted via a power cable to an onshore hydrogen plant. These scenarios imply that a growing number of related energy infrastructure will be added to wind farms.
Overall, the expansion plans imply new regional inter-dependencies between States, but also significant power shifts as new countries and maritime regions become major energy producers. In Europe, the North Sea and, in particular, States such as Denmark, Norway and the United Kingdom, are expected to become major green energy producers for the continent.15 In Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Viet Nam could become major energy producers. On the African continent, Madagascar, Namibia and Somalia have that potential, while in the Americas, Argentina, Chile and the Caribbean islands could assume this role. The opportunities for economic development and gaining new income from electricity export are substantial.16
Legal Regime
Comparable to other maritime activities, the legal regime governing offshore wind farms exhibits significant complexity. While these laws and how they differ across countries and regions require treatment in their own right,17 a series of common international principles are important to introduce since they set the parameters for understanding threats and solutions.
As the “constitution for the oceans,” the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has provided the legal foundations for wind energy installations since 1994.18 While UNCLOS had not explicitly considered offshore wind installations, it provides basic principles. Wind farms in territorial waters (up to 12 nautical miles from coastal baselines) are fully within the jurisdiction of coastal States. For those based in EEZs (up to 200 nautical miles from the baselines), or on the extended continental shelf that States can declare under certain conditions, special provisions apply.
Within territorial waters wind farms are governed in different national sector- specific policies. This usually includes energy, marine protection, marine safety and maritime security, and potentially cyber security policies.19 Marine spatial planning often provides the overall national framework for constructing and operating wind farms. Under UNCLOS, coastal States cannot close their territorial waters to foreign vessels but must ensure freedom of navigation and marine safety. However, States have full jurisdiction over marine installations, including underwater cables and pipelines.
Within the EEZ and extended continental shelf, the legal provisions are more complicated. In the EEZ, coastal States have all rights to economic resources, including wind, and obligations to protect the marine environment, for instance, from pollution. Under UNCLOS, third party States, however, have the right to lay cables and pipelines on the ocean floor beyond the territorial sea without needing the permission of the coastal State. UNCLOS is silent with regards to wind farm installations outside EEZs, an issue that has become a frequent object of legal debate.20
While UNCLOS provides the most important basic legal regime, several other international conventions govern wind farm security. The conventions of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in particular regulate shipping activities in and near offshore installations. Relevant conventions include the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL),21 the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (SUA)22 and its Protocol on the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Fixed Platforms Located on the Continental Shelf (SUA PROT), the Safety of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS) and its amendment,23 the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code (ISPS).24 MARPOL regulates when and how coastal States can limit navigation by declaring safety zones and special protection zones around offshore installations and structures. The ISPS Code and the SUA Convention are especially important in maritime security yet offer limited detail for wind farms. Other relevant legal regimes include international environmental law, as well as international criminal law.
Another set of laws and regulations is regional. These are in the framework of regional organizations such as the European Union25 or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,26 as well as regional environmental protection treaties under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme’s Regional Seas initiative.27
Threats and Risks
What are the threats and risks to offshore wind farm systems? In this section the threats organizing the discussion are reviewed around four dimen- sions: The first incorporates issues of marine safety, and particularly the potential for accidents and multi-use conflicts. These represent by far the most frequent threat to wind farm security at present. From there three types of more speculative risk are examined, drawing on more general analyses of maritime security issues.28 These comprise, blue crimes, meaning criminal activities that take place on, in, or across the sea; politically motivated actions by non-State groups such as terrorists, political extremists or advocacy groups; and finally, hostile State activities, including the threat posed by what is often called “grey zone warfare.”
The four issue areas are distinguished from each other by the kinds of legal rules they operate under, the nature and motivation of their perpetrators, and the kinds of legitimate responses they engender. For example, accidents are unintentional and largely a product of circumstance, whether that be human or corporate error, severe weather, or poor communication between users of the sea. Other threats and risks are purposive and premeditated, though are perpetrated by different kinds of actors for different reasons. Extremist activities, advocacy protests, and blue crimes are carried out by non-State actors, while hostile-State activities are sponsored or carried out by governments. States, extremists, and advocacy groups have in common that they pursue political objectives. This contrasts with maritime criminals, whose actions are profit driven, and who work for private gain rather than political goals.
However, each of these issue areas is also linked together by physical and legal characteristics of the maritime domain, which poses common challenges of policing, surveillance, and enforcement, often with a significant transnational or multinational dimension; by the constellation of actors that are likely to be involved in any maritime security response; and by the methods that might be used to attack or damage wind farm infrastructure. These include both physical vulnerabilities—of the wind turbines themselves, or of their land-based substations or undersea connecting cables—and the potential for cyber-attacks that target a wind farm network as a whole. In addition, there is the possibility that wind farm infrastructure might be used to facilitate other maritime security threats such as narcotics trafficking by sea.
Accidents and Multi-use Conflicts
Wind farm infrastructure is potentially vulnerable to accidents and damage from multi-use conflicts with other maritime activities. Broadly speaking, there are two categories of accidents to consider in this respect. The first is the potential for a collision between a ship and a wind turbine or substation at sea. The second is the potential for damage to undersea power cables from ship anchors or fishing practices such as bottom trawling.
Collisions have the potential to physically damage both the ship and wind farm infrastructure, and to cause marine environmental damage should it result in spillage of oil or chemicals from the ship. Any subsequent clean-up operation would likely lead to an extended shut down of wind farm operations to ensure the safety of those involved. Disruption could also be caused by a fire on board the ship or cargo loss that requires a search and rescue or recovery response.
There have been at least two recorded incidents of collisions between ships and wind farms in recent years. In January 2022, the bulk carrier Julietta D crashed into a substation foundation at the construction site of one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms, Hollandse Kust South in the Dutch North Sea, after being set adrift and left rudderless during a storm. The accident caused considerable damage to the Julietta D, as well as to the substation monopile, which was later removed.29 Just over a year later, in April 2023, another ship, the Petra L, was holed after it collided with a wind turbine in the Gode Wind 1 farm in the German North Sea. The turbine was taken offline for safety checks but put back in operation 24 hours later.30
In neither case was catastrophic harm caused to wind farm infrastructure and no major pollution incident occurred, though both the Julietta D and Petra L were badly damaged. It is also important to recognize that accidents and collisions between vessels at sea are not unusual, especially in busy areas such as port fairways.31 However, because both incidents seem to have been caused by either navigational failures or human error, they point to the importance of maintaining and enforcing strict safety protocols to reduce risks. They also imply that such accidents may become more frequent in future as the number and scale of offshore wind farms increases, especially if these are concentrated in already busy shipping zones such as the North Sea or South China Sea.
If collisions between vessels and above-sea wind farm structures have been relatively infrequent to date, the same is not true of damage to undersea power cables. Research suggests that cable failures are responsible for 80 percent of financial losses from wind farms.32 For example, there were four major cable outages in UK waters in 2017, resulting in an estimated £2.2 million in losses. An estimated 70 percent of all cable faults are due to damage caused by shipping, fishing, or boating activities.33 Undersea cables can be damaged by ship anchors, fishing trawlers, or navigational dredging. While cables can be protected by burial or armoring, they can still be vulnerable due to exposure during storms or disturbance by ship anchors and heavy bottom trawling equipment.
As with accidents with shipping, damage to undersea wind farm cables may become more frequent as offshore wind infrastructure expands. If hydrogen production and storage become co-located with wind farms, these risks are likely to increase given the highly inflammable nature of hydrogen gas.
Blue Crime
If accidents and multi-use conflicts already pose a threat to wind farm infrastructure, albeit one that is currently accommodated and manageable, there are also a series of further, potentially more serious, maritime security threats that are more speculative in nature. One is posed by blue crime. Crime at sea is already big business, whether it is piracy in the Gulf of Guinea or Southeast Asia, the smuggling of illicit goods and people, or environmental crimes such as illegal fishing, criminal activities in, on, or across the maritime domain pose a significant challenge to law enforcement agencies the world over.34
Offshore wind farm infrastructure is often situated in remote locations. While they are generally less accessible than their onshore counterparts, their maritime location makes routine security patrolling and surveillance more difficult and increases response times for enforcement actors.
Particular concerns have been raised about the potential for theft and vandalism, especially copper theft. Wind farm turbines contain around 3.6 tonnes of copper per megawatt, the scrap value of which is significant.35 This can make them a lucrative target for metal thieves. Though there have been few if any recorded incidents of copper theft from offshore facilities, the relative frequency of these thefts on land36 suggests the potential for such crimes to take place in the future. Incidents of subsea data cable theft have also been frequently reported, particularly in Vietnamese waters.37 This indicates that wind farm electricity cables might also face such risks in future, though these are more hazardous to interfere with than their data cable counterparts.
Wind farm installations can also be entangled with blue crimes in various ways. Turbines and sub-stations can be used as transshipment points for smuggling operations, for instance, the smuggling of narcotics, small arms, or counterfeits.
Irregular migration patterns and people smuggling operations can also disrupt wind energy operations. In October 2021, it was discovered that a boat carrying 25 irregular migrants had been adrift in the vicinity of a wind farm off the Belgian coast for two days. The wind farm had to be shut down to allow rescue operations to take place.38 For the Belgian coast guard and others, the potential for disruption to wind farms from people smuggling operations has become a key threat scenario. Indeed, Belgian maritime security forces conducted a major exercise focused on this issue in 2023.39
Another scenario is linked to piracy-prone areas such as Southeast Asia or the Gulf of Guinea, where service and repair vessels could become the target of armed robbery at sea, or kidnap for ransom operations. This could severely disrupt wind farm operations, specifically in case of urgent repair needs.
Wind farm infrastructure could also be put at risk by the activities of illicit fishing vessels. Illicit fishing is a major problem the world over. Illicit fishing vessels are more likely to employ destructive methods such as bottom trawling and even explosives fishing. Should such activities take place within the vicinity of a wind farm, then the potential for damage to cables or other structures could be significant. These risks are likely to be particularly high for wind farms located in regions where illicit fishing is prevalent, such as the South China Sea.40
Finally, wind farms are also vulnerable to cyber-crime. Cyber criminality is a growing concern across the maritime domain, with ports, ships and shipping companies increasingly becoming targets.41 Given the complexity of the components of a wind farm and the multiple suppliers and operators often involved, wind farms also face significant cyber risks.42
These scenarios had long been hypothetical. This changed in 2022 when three major cyber-attacks were targeted at wind energy companies. Two of these were reportedly State-sponsored and are discussed below. The third had criminal intent. In the spring of 2022, two German wind turbine companies (Nordex Group SE, Deutsche Windtechnik) were impacted by a ransomware attack.43 This resulted in the loss of remote connectivity to and control over wind turbines managed by the companies. The attacks were attributed to a criminal group known as Conti, associated with large-scale ransomware operations across industry sectors.
While in this case larger scale damage was averted and the turbines continued to operate, the attack demonstrated some of the cyber vulnerabilities of wind farms. The multi-layered and digitally networked nature of wind farm installations means that a cyber-attack on one part of the infrastructure, for example, at a land-based sub-station or even the wind farm supply chain, could quickly propagate through the network as a whole. Such an attack could be used to physically damage the wind farm turbines themselves, to steal privileged technical data, or to close down a facility in some other way.44 Given that the value of large offshore wind farms can run to billions of dollars, this could make them, and the companies that operate them, attractive potential targets for cyber-criminals seeking to extort money, inflict reputational damage or steal commercial secrets.
Politically Motivated Non-State Actors
Terrorism at sea has long been a concern on the maritime security agenda, centering on the prospect of an attack on a ship or its passengers, the potential for vessels to be used as weapons themselves, or the use of maritime transport to facilitate terrorist activities.45 In practice, such attacks have been rare. However, major incidents have occurred, which resulted in damage to ships and led to significant casualties.46 Extremist violence from land can also spill over into the maritime domain in areas of political instability and conflict, as has been the case off the coast of Yemen in recent years.47
While a terrorist attack on offshore wind farm infrastructure is unlikely at present, it should not be entirely discounted. Given the growing importance of wind power to some States’ energy production strategies, and the major financial investment that large-scale wind farms and linked hydrogen production represent, an attack could cause considerable damage and disruption, with significant political effects. An incident could entail a physical attack on a wind turbine or substation using explosives or a hijacked vessel, or a cyber-attack aimed at destroying or disabling wind farm operations. Undersea cables could also be targeted maliciously. Large-scale physical damage to offshore wind infrastructure could also cause floating debris, which could in turn pose a risk to navigation and so cascade the threat.
States with major wind expansion plans that have seen terrorism incidents in recent years are likely to be the most vulnerable in this regard. A particular case is the Philippines, which has substantial offshore wind resources and large-scale expansion plans,48 but is also home to the Abu Sayyaf extremist group, which has a track record of attacking targets in the maritime domain.49
Not all risk scenarios falling into this category are terrorist or violent in nature. In so far as it is carried out for political purposes, direct action by advocacy organizations which aim to cause disruption can also be included as a politically motivated non-State risk. These actions may be to draw attention to a cause or to frustrate practices to which a particular group is opposed. These kinds of protests are quite common at sea. Examples include the actions of environmental groups to disrupt offshore oil and gas extraction or whaling activities,50 or port blockades by fishing boats in protest against catch restrictions and the like.51
It should not be assumed that the offshore wind industry will be immune from such protests. Opposition to offshore wind farms can be significant due to concerns about their impact on the visual landscape of coastal areas, on marine wildlife such as seabirds and marine mammals, or their potential to create multi-use conflicts with other users of the sea such as fishers.52 In this context, it is conceivable that some groups could take direct action to disrupt wind farm construction or operations, for example, by obstructing building work or operations with small boats at sea.
Inter-State Conflicts and Grey Zone Warfare
Finally, and perhaps most seriously, wind farm infrastructure is vulnerable to State-based threats of various sorts. Given the growing importance of underwater electricity grids and offshore wind farms for the energy security of many States, such infrastructure has become plausible targets in inter-State warfare scenarios. While large-scale destruction of such infrastructure could form part of the outbreak of inter-State war, the current threat scenarios are concerned with a lower scale and most associated with what is often called “grey zone warfare.”
Grey zone warfare comprises coercive actions by States or their proxies which avoid the overt or attributable use of military force and so fall below the threshold of outright war.53 The aim is to achieve tactical or strategic gains while avoiding the costs and risks of military confrontation.54 Grey zone activities are characterized by their ambiguity and deniability. It is often hard to establish whether a State authorized an action, and how to link it to the organization or individual who it carried out.
Critical maritime infrastructure, including potentially wind farms, has emerged as a key potential target for grey zone operations, in large part because their marine location can make clandestine action easier. If they are located on the high seas or a State’s EEZ rather than its territorial waters, they will also be subject to looser regimes of legal jurisdiction and sovereignty than would be the case on land. This can make identifying and responding to suspicious activity more difficult. This is especially so in the case of subsea infrastructure such as cables, which are made doubly remote by both their marine and undersea location. The growing importance of wind farm infrastructure in many parts of the world has raised concerns that they could also be subject to grey zone attacks.
In the North Sea and Baltic Sea regions, specific concerns are linked to Russia and whether the government has plans for acts of sabotage. These concerns emerged following the Russian occupation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and intensified further after the sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines in the EEZs of Denmark and Sweden in 2022.55 While the explosions are still under investigation and the perpetrators continue to remain unidentified, within Europe this has increased fear that the subsea electricity cables of wind farms might be targeted in the future. According to several news reports, the Russian navy has conducted intelligence operations in the North Sea and Baltic Sea region with the aim of mapping wind farm and cable infrastructure.56 Russian State officials have also declared that subsea data cables constitute a legitimate target for military action.57 The strategic benefits of such threats, other than causing fear and a feeling of uncertainty among societies, are however unclear. An attack on a wind farm or electricity cable, could, however, function as an escalatory step in a wider strategy of grey zone operations. In consequence, the issue is taken very seriously by security organizations, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and those of the EU.58
Similar concerns are linked to China. Certainly, China’s coast guard, and maritime militia forces are frequently accused of grey zone activities.59 A prime target has been the waters around Taiwan as well as those of the South China Sea. Here Chinese agencies have engaged in various forms of harassment and coercion against rival States. This has included patrolling in disputed waters, conducting dangerous maneuverers in the vicinity of other States’ vessels, and preventing the arrest of Chinese fishers accused of illegal fishing. China’s extensive State-owned, though nominally autonomous, fishing fleet has also been deployed for similar purposes. Some of these activities are likely to target maritime infrastructure directly. For example, a series of 27 underwater data cable cuts over five years in Taiwanese waters has led to suspicions that these might have been intentional acts and part of a Chinese grey zone campaign to harass the country and undermine its connectivity.60
While these activities have not yet had a direct impact on wind farm installations, it is not inconceivable that this might change in the future. A particular issue is China-Vietnam relations. Vietnam is the country with the largest offshore wind potential in the South China Sea and has plans to substantially expand its wind farm infrastructure far into its EEZ, including in areas close to contested maritime boundaries.61 It also has engaged in an escalating grey zone struggle with China in the South China Sea.62 This might imply the prospect of future incidents aimed at either disrupting the construction of wind farms or threatening their maintenance over time.
Grey zone activities likewise include the cyber domain as two major incidents indicate. At the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian hacker groups launched cyber-attacks on a satellite in order to limit the command-and-control structures of the Ukrainian armed forces.63 Over 30,000 satellite communication modems stopped working, including 5,800 that were used by the German wind energy operator ENERCON to monitor wind turbines.64 The affected wind turbines continued to operate unmonitored, but the damaged modems had to be physically replaced. The incident indicates the risk of spillover and collateral damage from State-sponsored attacks on civilian infrastructure.
In the same year, analysts published a report providing evidence of a State-sponsored cyber espionage campaign by China.65 Using phishing emails to install malware, the targets of these activities were said to include, “global heavy industry manufacturers which conduct maintenance of fleets of wind turbines in the South China Sea.”66 The hackers reportedly gained insights into the operating systems of wind turbines which could be used in a direct attack.
Solutions for the Protection of Wind Energy Systems
Wind farms are, for the most part, privately owned and operated by energy companies. When they are not, they involve public-private partnerships. This puts much of the burden of protecting wind farms from the threats above in the hands of the industry. Yet, under international law, States have the obligation to ensure safety of navigation and to protect their territorial waters and resources in the EEZ from harm caused by malicious actors. The rise of concerns about grey zone scenarios in the aftermath of the Nord Stream sabotage, moreover, has shifted the balance sheet, as such threats require governmental intervention. In consequence, governments increasingly address wind farm security under the critical maritime infrastructure protection agenda. The range of solutions for protecting offshore wind energy installations are introduced and discussed below.
Ocean Management Solutions
The backbone for protection of offshore wind energy installations are ocean management solutions geared at avoiding multi-use conflicts. The most traditional and important solutions are nautical charts. Charts are used for navigation and mark areas that pose risks and need to be avoided. In congested maritime areas they prescribe obligatory lanes for maritime transport. Through charts accidents can be essentially limited. Contemporary charts mark wind farm installations as well as subsea cables to avoid accidental damage. Ensuring the accuracy of charts is under the authority of national hydrographic offices with the support of the International Hydrographic Organization.
Charts also provide the basis for marine spatial planning (MSP). The primary objective of MSP is to avoid multi-use conflicts by devising zones in which particular activities are permitted and others prohibited.67 In some parts of the world, such in waters under the jurisdiction of European Union Member States, marine spatial planning is obligatory. Yet, regulatory practices setting out which activities are permitted within zones allocated to wind farms differ widely. While some prohibit recreational and fishing activities in the vicinity of wind farms, others do not, allowing de facto uninhibited access to wind farm installations and potentially endangering subsea installations through fishing activities such as bottom trawling.
Under the provisions of UNCLOS, the power of States to limit navigation in territorial waters and the EEZ is limited under the innocent and transit passage regimes. However, States have the right to declare specific protection zones for the safety of navigation or for marine environmental protection goals.68
Economically viable wind energy production is only feasible at specific geophysical locations, many of which are in areas already in use. This means that multi-use conflicts are to some extent inevitable, including with ecosystem needs (e.g., currents, fish, and bird migration), shipping, fishing, and recreational users of the sea. Wind farms also create potential multi-use conflicts with military actors. Active wind farm turbines can create radar clutter and potential “shadow zones,” with implications for coastal surveillance, air traffic control, and national air defense systems.69 While numerous technical solutions to mitigate these problems are in use or under development,70 these concerns have led to the delay or abandonment of wind farm projects in the past and will need to be managed carefully if wind farm infrastructure is to expand significantly in coming years.
Surveillance
Surveillance is a key resilience measure both to ensure operations and detect faults as well as any physical manipulations or intruders. Wind farms are remotely operated, and their functionality is monitored from ashore. Companies also use optical solutions, such as closed circuit television to monitor their platforms and record incidents. Increasingly, wind operators also employ drones and autonomous vessels to monitor the different wind farm components.
Governments conduct surveillance of maritime spaces in different layers. Maritime Search and Rescue Centers monitor ship traffic for marine safety, fishing authorities monitor the activities of fishing vessels, while other monitoring systems are for military and police purposes. In several countries and regional organizations, this data is often fused in maritime security and operating centers to detect and respond to maritime security issues in an interlinked system often described as maritime domain awareness (MDA).71 MDA systems rely on data from different sensors. The backbone is the tracking data from the automatic identification system, which is mandatory under IMO regulations for large vessels, and VHF systems, which are obligatory in many countries for fishing vessels. These systems are supported by coastal radar, crewed and uncrewed surveillance vessels and aircraft, satellites, and complemented with information gathering from human sources, such as incident reports from marine users. The level of sophistication and fusion capabilities of such systems differs significantly across countries and regions. Given the transnational character of the majority of marine activities, countries also pool sources on a regional level. Within the European Union this is, for instance, done via the Common Information Sharing Environment operated by the European Maritime Safety Agency, while in Southeast Asia the Information Fusion Center of the Singapore navy performs this function. With remote sensing and data processing technology rapidly improving, these systems increasingly get smarter and are able to detect threats and suspicious behavior, which allows for rapid responses and intelligence-informed policing at sea.
Given the scale of the space that needs to be monitored, and the acceleration of maritime activity over the past decades, however, all systems have gaps. These can be linked to technological capabilities, but also to the political mandates and priorities given to the authorities running surveillance systems. Often the monitoring of activities in the vicinity of wind farms and underwater cables is not a priority, as issues such as piracy, smuggling, pollution, or the prevention of accidents take precedence. In other cases, classification standards, for instance, between military and police, can prevent the sharing of information that might be of relevance to offshore energy.
Another noteworthy gap concerns the underwater domain. Maritime security surveillance tends to focus on surface activities, with capacities to monitor activity under water limited to high-end military anti-submarine warfare. This leaves underwater electricity cables and pipelines in essence unmonitored. Yet, the capacity of cables to sense movements in the vicinity and act as sensors is increasing.72 Finally, surveillance solutions also raise the question of whether and how industry and governments share information, which is an issue that we return to below.
Operations at Sea
A third type of solution is operations at sea by navies, coast guards, police, and other seagoing forces. The primary purpose of such operations is usually to conduct surveillance or provide a direct response to incidents. However, these forces are also often mandated to maintain a presence at sea for deterrence purposes. Dedicated maritime security operations and patrol programs have become an important instrument in the fight against blue crimes, piracy, people smuggling, and illicit fishing activities in particular. In regional seas where such crimes are rampant, operations at sea can play an important role in helping to protect offshore wind energy installations.
Current maritime security operations tend not to have an explicit mandate to protect offshore energy installations. However, there are exceptions and indications that this is changing. The NATO sanction enforcement mission in the Mediterranean, Operation Active Endeavour, for example, has a mandate to monitor critical maritime infrastructure, although it has not been activated to date. In response to the Nord Stream pipelines attacks, several States in the North Sea and Baltic Sea have launched dedicated military operations either unilaterally or under the auspices of NATO to monitor in particular subsea infrastructure and to deter Russia from operating in these waters.73
Critical Infrastructure Protection Agenda
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline attacks, countries across Europe and the transatlantic community have initiated a re-evaluation of their dependencies on critical infrastructure. Attempting to identify new policy responses to better protect maritime infrastructure from State threats has led to them being concerned within wider frameworks of critical infrastructure protection. Critical infrastructure protection (CIP) policies aim at coordinating risk assessments and security responses across industrial sectors by identifying the interlinkages of infrastructure and potential chain reactions.74 Such policies originate in the counter-terrorism responses of the 2000s, and energy and transport are sectors to which particular attention has been paid. Policies and frameworks have focused especially on port facilities as well as offshore oil and gas platforms. Other maritime installations, in particular wind farms and undersea cables have hardly featured in these policies so far.
Including offshore wind energy systems in CIP frameworks is problematic, since these tend to be focused on terrestrial infrastructure and do not pay sufficient attention to the geophysical and regulatory particularities of the sea.75 Hence, there have been calls for a dedicated maritime CIP agenda that addresses these concerns. However, this debate remains in its infancy.76 A particular challenge is how to deal with the increasingly transnational character of wind energy related electricity grids. This raises the question of at what geographical scale strategies should operate if national level responses are insufficient. This could be at the bilateral level (e.g., agreements between the United Kingdom and Norway), in regional seas (e.g., North Sea, Baltic Sea), but also larger regional frameworks (e.g., European Union, NATO, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)).
Industry-State Cooperation
Since private companies operate wind farm systems, cooperation between government authorities and industries is a necessity in protection measures. This ensures that governments have the right understanding and expertise, but also that information on identified risks and incidents is shared between public and private surveillance systems. In the field of cyber security, cooperation mechanisms are advanced,77 yet this is not necessarily the case for the physical side of wind farm protection.
Since wind farm protection is potentially costly, this raises the question of financial burden sharing and whether it is taxpayers, energy consumers or shareholders that should shoulder the costs. While minimum security standards that wind farm construction and operations should comply with have not been specified, they prospectively include additional physical hardening, stronger surveillance, and potentially even private armed guards. Identifying best practices and standards will likely require either self- or State regulation, which could drive up the costs if not harmonized across nations and regional seas.
Weak States and Capacity-Building
The green energy transformation is unfolding globally. If the first wave of wind energy expansion was driven by only a handful of countries, including Belgium, China, Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom, many emerging market economies, such as Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, have plans to develop significant wind farm infrastructure in the coming years.78 Numerous other coastal States and small island nations have significant offshore wind generation potential. Few of these States have experience in wind farm planning and development, and many have weak ocean governance and maritime security capacities. For this reason, the global expansion of wind farm infrastructure has to be accompanied by significant capacity-building efforts to address risks and vulnerabilities.
Capacity-building works to empower partner States to carry out particular functions of governance, security, and economic development. Usually, it entails the delivery of skills training, material resources, infrastructure, and institution-building activities by donor States and international organizations with experience and resources in these areas to recipient States. Significant capacity-building work is carried out in the fields of maritime and cyber security, with key providers including the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the European Union, as well as individual States such as Denmark, France, Japan, and the United States.79 While these programs aim to strengthen the maritime security capacities of recipient States, they focus primarily on the fight against blue crimes such as piracy and maritime smuggling.
Capacity-building for wind farm security can build on these activities but is likely to require the development of a series of more specialist skills and organizational capacity. Some of these activities are practical in nature, relating to, for example, training maritime security and law enforcement personnel in skills such as how to embark on and gain entry to an offshore wind turbine. Scenario planning and at-sea exercises may be needed to ensure maritime security and law enforcement actors are prepared to respond to threats and incidents as they occur, and able to work with other agencies and industry stakeholders in so doing. Others relate to the wider demands of offshore wind farm development, including, for example, around MSP processes, or knowledge of the legal regime under which offshore wind farms operate. Capacity-building to assist with the development of new legal frameworks and statutes may be required to address issues such as wind farm planning and tendering processes, to respond to new types of criminal threats, or to manage potential multi-use conflicts.
Finally, there is the question of who will pay for and carry out these activities. Some work in this area is already ongoing. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank are working to support the Philippines in its plans for offshore wind expansion, for example.80 However, the growing need for such activities will likely require closer engagement from key wind farm exporters, such as Denmark, Germany, and Japan, major industry players, and traditional maritime security capacity-building providers such as the UNODC.
Conclusion: Securing the Future of Offshore Wind Energy
Wind energy technologies are rapidly advancing, leading to larger, more effective wind energy generation infrastructure, which can be installed in more difficult environments. Embedding aquaculture farms and solar panels in wind farms, and co-locating hydrogen plants offshore will lead to increasingly complex systems, with a growing network of electricity cables, pipelines, and service and supply lines connected to these. This dense assemblage of platforms, artificial islands, and their connectors presents a significant shift in ocean use. Development plans across nations and regions are expansive and indicate that much of the energy future lies offshore. Moreover, the conclusion of a new United Nations treaty on the seabed and high seas in 202381 opens the future possibility of wind farm assemblages being installed in areas outside national jurisdiction. Security, risk and resilience analysis and policies, however, have struggled to keep pace with these developments.
The recent surge in engineering and cyber risk literature that focuses on offshore wind energy, as well as the rise of critical maritime infrastructure protection debates, indicates that this situation is gradually changing. However, as discussed above, such analyses fall short if they do not consider the full spectrum of threats from multi-use conflicts, blue crime, extremism, and hostile State actions. The regulatory and governmental context in which wind farms are situated and protection plays out likewise needs to be considered. This also means that future debates must pay more attention to how grander developments in world politics will shape the future of wind energy security.
Geopolitics is increasingly seen as potentially undermining investments in offshore wind energy due to worries over the vulnerabilities they entail compared to land-based energy. Such concerns have been raised in particular with regards to the tensions with China in the Indian Ocean.82 Tensions between China and the European Union and the United States also drive fears over infrastructure dependencies and espionage leading to attempts to limit foreign direct investment in infrastructure by China or restrict the use of Chinese technologies.
On the other hand, both the urgency of the climate crisis and the need to decarbonize economies, as well as the hype around sustainable ocean use, known as the blue economy, drive debates toward cooperative solutions. In particular, the conclusion of the negotiations of a new treaty complementing the international law of the sea in 2023, can be read as an indicator of a new multi-lateral momentum and new global norms in the making. Such new norms should address the protection of offshore infrastructure and drive global and regional capacity-building efforts to secure the green energy transition offshore.
Christian Bueger’s research has benefitted from funding by the Velux Foundation and the Edinburgh-Copenhagen Partnership Fund. The research has also been supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/S008810/1). For discussions, comments and suggestions that have informed this article the authors would like to thank Andrew Neal, Trine Villumsen Berling, Veronika Slakaityte, Jan Stockbruegger, Vonintsoa Raffaly, and Tobias Liebetrau, as well as a range of conversation partners in the energy industry that have preferred to stay anonymous.
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