Offshore Wind and Security in the North Sea: Key Findings from a Workshop

Offshore wind is already the single biggest generator of electricity in the UK and,over time, is expected to become more critical to the energy system, and therefore national security. As new generation capacity is built and the economy electrifies, the North Sea will host more turbines, subsea cables, substations, and service vessels. This could displace imported energy with an additional domestic resource and distribute generation over a wide area, creating the opportunity to reduce the dependence of infrastructure on vulnerable nodes. But if security does not keep pace with rollout, the UK could also create new vulnerabilities.

The workshop convened 28 participants, including officials from the UK government and parliament; the police and armed forces; energy, defence and supply chain companies; insurance and consultancies; embassies; and independent experts. The workshop covered the physical security of offshore wind in the North Sea specifically, although some of the findings apply to all offshore infrastructure in UK waters.

The discussion identified concerns about a lack of monitoring of infrastructure and related marine activity in the North Sea. Industry participants described occasional nuisance drones and suspicious activity, rather than material disruption. Away from the North Sea, participants reported disruption to supply chain operations due to jamming and spoofing in the Arabian Gulf and offshore Taiwan, sometimes resulting in communications being lost with unmanned service vessels for days. While not yet apparent in the North Sea, these experiences show that the threat landscape is changing.

Detection and reporting remain in their infancy, resulting in limited situational awareness. Assets are often unmanned and lightly monitored for security purposes. Companies may not know what should be reported, the level of detail required, who to report to, and how the information would be used, nor do they have significant incentive to report suspicious activity. Public authorities acknowledged that companies operating offshore need confidence that reporting will trigger meaningful outcomes. Since this is lacking, reporting is often incomplete, inconsistent or delayed and the UK has only a partial picture of offshore activity. This in turn hinders design of a proportionate protection and response framework. 

Participants pointed out that poor quality data makes it harder to judge when an activity is a nuisance, suspicious or something more significant.

Suggested Recommendations

• Develop clearer reporting guidance for offshore wind and associated supply chains, including what to report, to whom, in what format and with what supporting information.
• Consider producing a regular public or controlled-circulation threat assessment for offshore energy infrastructure - drawing on practices from Norway and other countries - utilising industry reporting, police, defence and intelligence inputs and increasing the incentive for industry to report by creating a tangible outcome.
• Improve two-way information sharing as investigations into incidents develop.

A concern voiced by most participants was that responsibilities are not sufficiently clear for offshore incidents that are disruptive but do not pose an immediate risk to life. This is more likely with unmanned assets and unmanned vessels. In these cases, which body has the authority and capability to monitor, intervene, deter or coordinate? Which body has overarching responsibility if multiple agencies are involved?

Participants suggested the UK should explore a ‘one stop shop’ for industry reporting and liaison during and after incidents, and an authority able to coordinate across the coastguard, police, defence, regulators and industry. The merits of two existing structures were discussed. The first was the Prefet Maritime system in France, which functions as a framework allowing multi-agency coordination and a focal point for industry engagement. The second was the UK Secretary of State’s Representative for Maritime Salvage and Intervention (SOSREP), a person vested with the authority to manage maritime safety emergencies.

Suggested Recommendations

• Clarify thresholds for escalation: when an incident remains a private sector operator issue, when it becomes a policing issue, and when the armed forces should be involved.
• Explore whether the UK needs clearer offshore security coordination for hostile or suspected hostile incidents affecting energy infrastructure, taking lessons from France’s maritime prefect system and the UK’s SOSREP model.

A single, or even several, wind farms going offline is not necessarily a national energy emergency. Offshore wind is disbursed over a wide area and electricity systems built around offshore wind include backup, flexibility and balancing arrangements by design to manage periods of low wind output. Impacting the electricity system through attacks on offshore wind would require large-scale and wide-ranging attacks that would be difficult for an attacker to claim as accidents or to deny responsibility for. 

However, the more fundamental question is whether the emerging offshore system overall is easier to disrupt, slower to recover or more dependent on concentrated nodes that are difficult to defend. 

Therefore, risk to the national electricity system is more likely to relate to cables, substations, ports, specialist vessels, spare parts, contractors and digital systems. A well-designed electricity system may absorb some loss of generation but could be exposed to long repair times, repeat nuisance disruption, investor uncertainty, rising insurance costs or loss of confidence in the offshore operating environment. Technical and cost implications need careful examination: apparently simple protection measures such as burying cables more deeply, for example, are not well understood and can impact technical performance.

Security-by-design is the right ambition, but is currently aspirational, with security generally treated separately and case-by-case. To be effective, security considerations should be factored into the planning and design of the energy system and energy projects, as well as regulation and contracts. Licencing and auction design are also important and there are differences between European countries on how security is managed in these processes that might benefit from closer examination. Security planning must also continuously adapt to the changing system and technological landscape, both in energy and defence. Cables are much more exposed in floating wind power plants, for example.

Suggested Recommendations

• Assess offshore wind security in the context of the national energy system, not only of individual assets or operators, to determine least cost, highest impact interventions.
• Translate security-by-design into practical requirements for planning, leasing, auction design, grid connection, repair planning and long-term system architecture.
• Examine how future leasing and consenting processes can incorporate defence, radar, maritime security and repair considerations earlier.
• Treat floating wind as a distinct future risk area because of dynamic cables and distance from shore.

Participants discussed the lack of preparedness for repair and recovery. Recovery capacity comes with an upfront cost, but having spares available and vessels on standby would substantially reduce down time in some cases, lowering the cost of incidents and increasing the incident frequency the sector can cope with. Sustaining recovery capacity is a collective challenge across industry and regional governments, with spares and repair capabilities often shared across assets and borders.

Lessons might be drawn from safety performance standards already in place offshore, particularly for oil and gas facilities. This could involve expectations around recovery times, contractor readiness and spare availability. There was some discussion about who should be driving resilience standards: industry bodies, insurers, regulators, a SOSREP-type authority, or some combination of these.

Other sectors were also discussed, notably telecoms, where there is more coordination over industry-wide repair capability and vessels on standby. Participants noted that, unlike in telecoms, offshore power cables and other equipment are not necessarily interchangeable, with bespoke project designs, differences between manufacturers and technical specifications impacting the availability of spares. Universal joints and technical workarounds exist in some cases, but are not always the solution. Consequently repair and recovery should be incorporated into early project engineering.

Suggested Recommendations

• Explore performance-based resilience standards for offshore wind security and recovery, drawing on offshore oil and gas safety practice where appropriate.
• Examine whether joint repair arrangements, similar in principle to telecoms cable repair models, could work for offshore power cables and other nodal equipment.
• Consider how procurement, subsidies, insurance and regulation could incentivise secure and resilient supply chains without unnecessarily delaying deployment.

The workshop discussed the wide set of companies and investors involved in the offshore wind industry. Offshore wind has complex supply chains and fragmented ownership. Offshore energy in general relies heavily on contractors, temporary workers and specialist personnel who may only be present for relatively short periods of time. This creates security questions around who has access to sensitive systems, vessels, infrastructure and data, as well as how contractors are vetted, and the extent of visibility infrastructure operators, government and regulators have of offshore activity and broader supply chains.

Participants acknowledged the strategic challenge of developing more of the supply chain within Europe. Global supply chains are typically more efficient. However, in the case of repair and recovery, long delivery times and vessels being located elsewhere can also result in high costs, creating the possibility for savings when more of the supply chain is in Europe.

Suggested Recommendations

• Include contractor access, vetting and insider risk in offshore wind security planning.
• Map critical dependencies in the offshore wind supply chain, especially where multiple operators rely on the same scarce components, ports, vessels or specialist firms.
• Examine whether industry associations can help develop common standards for contractor assurance and supplier risk management.

The UK does not operate in isolation in the North Sea. Cooperation with allies is essential and already bears fruit through joint defence operations and through police connections with Norway, which have helped with attribution when suspicious activity has been reported offshore. Infrastructure is geographically distributed and interconnections and cross-border vessel activity mean that international efforts are particularly important for monitoring. Capabilities for incident response, such as vessels, repair capacity, intelligence, naval assets, and industrial supply chains, are also multinational.

Participants discussed the possible venues for cooperation, including North Sea Energy Cooperation (NSEC), NATO, EU-UK cooperation, bilateral channels, and industry-led initiatives. There was general agreement that different problems require different groupings. However, collaboration in the North Sea is hindered by the UK not being a part of either the NSEC or the EU. EU funding may increasingly support physical and cyber programmes to improve energy infrastructure resilience while EU regulation sets standards and expectations. The UK will need separate routes for alignment, joint investment and operational coordination. 

Participants noted that NATO is also playing an important role in improving information sharing between allies and infrastructure operators, and that part of the NATO defence spending commitment could provide a route for funding energy infrastructure security.

The threat environment in the North Sea is changing and characterised by low-level but consequential incidents, uneven visibility, uncertain thresholds and governance that is not keeping pace with the sector’s growing criticality. Experience from elsewhere in the world – sabotage in the Baltic Sea, jamming and spoofing in the Gulf and Taiwan, and attacks on infrastructure and shipping in Russia, Ukraine and the Black Sea – shows that the UK must prepare for an environment in which new types of physical attack are possible and on a wider set of potential targets.

Industry, government and public bodies are engaging seriously with the problem, but the pace of practical change is not yet commensurate with the growth of the sector or the rate at which the threat is evolving. Better reporting, clearer feedback, improved situational awareness, stronger recovery planning, and more credible coordination arrangements would ensure that the buildout of offshore wind reduces UK vulnerability.

Three priorities were particularly clear. First, that the UK should improve detection, reporting and feedback. Second that clearer offshore security governance should be explored. Third, serious consideration should be given to resilience expectations, particularly around repair capability, cables, spare parts and recovery time.

Security of offshore wind should be incorporated into planning, operations and governance early enough to shape how and where infrastructure is being built. Ultimately, this will result in lower cost energy than a situation where offshore assets are being retrofitted or suffering repeated disruption.