Estonia is a small European country with a population of 1.4 million and an area of circa 45,000 square kilometers. It is one of the three Baltic countries located beside the Baltic Sea. It has a land border connecting with Russia and Latvia and it is only 80 kilometers by sea from the capital of Finland, Helsinki. Only some thirty years have passed since Estonia regained independence in 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved. It had already declared independence much earlier, in 1918, after World War I, but was occupied by the Soviet Union from 1940 until 1991. In 2004, Estonia became a member of the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Estonia’s energy policy has been heavily oriented toward national security concerns and attempts to break connections with the Russian energy system. The general orientation has been to reduce the geopolitical threat of Russia, that is, negative security. The development of oil shale has been important to Estonia in its disconnection pursuits from the Russian energy supply and, hence, this has slowed down Estonia’s zero-carbon energy transition. Yet the location of the oil shale production has been close to the Russian border, reducing the security of this energy type due to potential Russian intervention. Gradually, Estonia has stopped commercial electricity trade with Russia, despite still-existing infrastructural connections, and has aimed to cover consumption by using domestic sources while also expanding energy interconnections with the EU (Kama, Reference Kama2016). This decision made Estonia the EU member state with the lowest energy import dependence. Estonia’s reliance on energy imports reduced from 34 percent in 2000 to less than 5 percent in 2019.Footnote ¹ From 2010, Estonia became a net exporter of electricity generated from oil shale. However, by 2020, the country’s energy import dependence had increased again to 11 percent (Statistics Estonia, 2023), partly due to the emission reduction requirements of EU climate and environmental policy.

Since the early 1990s, this country has experienced a relatively rapid development, from being part of the “laggard” Eastern European Bloc to a nation with advanced digital technologies. Despite the general innovativeness of Estonia, its energy system has been largely tied to an old fossil fuel-based regime, in particular oil shale, and dependence on Russian electricity and gas networks. Oil shale is “an energy-rich sedimentary rock that can either be burned for heat and power generation or used for producing liquid fuels” (IEA, 2019, p. 11); it has a carbon intensity similar to coal but is less efficient as a fuel due to a lower share of organic matter. The mining of oil shale began officially in 1918 when a government decree made open pits the responsibility of a particular department in the Ministry of Trade and Industry (Holmberg, Reference Holmberg2008). Estonia’s energy supply has relied almost entirely on domestic oil shale since 1991.

Oil shale consumption dropped dramatically, over 40 percent, during the 1990–1995 period, in connection with Estonia gaining independence.Footnote ² However, after 2000 there was a gradual increase in total oil shale consumption, peaking at 15 million tons in 2013, a 42 percent increase on 2000 (Statistics Estonia, 2023). This was followed by a gradual decline, and then sudden drops to 5.9 million tons in 2019 and 3.1 million tons in 2020 (see Figure 5.1). This decline in the share of oil shale was caused by rising CO₂ emission quota prices, making this type of energy less competitive in the European electricity markets (Vasser, Reference Vasser2021). In addition, some large oil shale plants had reached their full operational age. However, the data also shows a rather rapid increase of oil shale consumption more recently, in 2022, when the energy crisis hit Europe following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Figure 5.1

Total consumption of oil shale (thousand tons), 2000–2022.

Source: Statistics Estonia (2021).

The overall share of natural gas has been low within Estonia’s total energy consumption, while the gas used in Estonia was mostly supplied from Russia until 2015. A Russian company, Gazprom, was the main supplier to all the Baltic countries and the only gas supplier to Estonia, meaning these countries were all vulnerable to sudden disruptions (Pakalkaitė and Posaner, Reference Pakalkaitė, Posaner and Godzimirski2019). This is illustrated by the gas dispute in 2009 between Russia and Ukraine that left many EU countries that relied on Gazprom with severe shortages (Štreimikiene et al., Reference Štreimikiene, Strielkowski, Bilan and Mikalauskas2016). Estonia’s concerns about Russia’s tactics to maintain a monopoly of gas transit to Europe has resulted in it denying the Nord Stream pipeline access to its territorial waters (Crandall, Reference Crandall2014). In December 2014, a new terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) was opened in Lithuania, which allowed Estonia to diversify its supply from Gazprom (Pakalkaitė and Posaner, Reference Pakalkaitė, Posaner and Godzimirski2019). A new gas pipeline, Balticconnector, was opened between Finland and Estonia in 2020, connecting gas markets in the two countries, with the aim to create a regional Baltic–Finnish gas market. The pipeline was massively damaged in fall 2023 halting supply. Investigation to this incident was inconclusive regarding intentionality of this damage, with the likely cause being damage by a ship anchor. Almost 40 percent of natural gas is used in district heating, but, due to increasing natural gas prices, district heat producers are increasingly considering local renewable fuels (MEAC, 2022).

Estonia met the EU target for renewable energy, 25 percent, in 2011, primarily through biomass and wind power, although the former caused degradation of biodiversity. The shares of renewable energy and combined heat and power (CHP) in the country’s electricity production have rapidly expanded. In 2021, renewable energy amounted to 38 percent of total energy and 29 percent of electricity production, while oil shale still made up over a half. Of renewable electricity production in 2022, about half was from wood chips and waste, a quarter from wind power, and 20 percent from solar power (Statistics Estonia, 2023). The expansion of the wind power niche has been limited owing to concerns related to the effects of wind turbines on the defence sector’s air surveillance radars. This issue is explored later in this chapter.

This chapter analyzes the first country case study of this book. It creates the context of energy and security regimes in which the interplay of energy and security policies occurs. It then follows the analytical foci presented in Chapter 3: the perceptions of Russia as exerting landscape pressure on energy transitions, policy coherence and integration between energy and security, and positive and negative security aspects related to niche development and regime destabilization via three cases. These are: the phaseout of oil shale, the effects of wind turbines on defence air surveillance radars, and desynchronization from the Russian electricity system. The empirical data analyzed include government energy and security strategies published during 2006–2021 and two rounds of interviews with energy and security experts, between October 2020 and May 2021 and between January and March 2023. These primary sources have been complemented with the literature.

5.1 Energy Regime

As outlined, the key sources of the Estonian energy system have been oil shale, imported natural gas, and a range of renewable energies, especially wood chips and waste streams. Unlike in Finland (Chapter 6) and the UK (Chapter 8), Estonia does not have any nuclear power. A government-level working group was established in 2021 to investigate the possibilities of establishing small modular reactors. One complication is that Estonia has no experience of regulating nuclear power so proceeding with this would require drafting new legislation and increasing nuclear expertise.

A developing renewable energy niche is that of offshore wind power, for which there are significant plans. The planned developments include two sites in the Gulf of Riga and near the western island of Saaremaa that would cover 1,700 square kilometers and provide circa 7 gigawatts (Vanttinen, Reference Vanttinen2022). By 2030, the Estonian government aims that 65 percent of total consumption will be provided by wind power (CPTRA, 2023). Maritime planning was advanced in early 2022 to investigate the effects of offshore wind on defence, shipping routes, and the environment.

Besides renewable energy development and in direct opposition to the aim to decarbonize the energy system, new applications to exploit oil shale and gas are still being made. For instance, the Estonian Ministry for Economic Affairs and Communications has been interested in the shale gas developments in North America, which are a result of substantial shale gas deposits found in the US (MEAC, 2022). In addition, connected to the need to diversify gas supplies, biomethane from local bio-based raw materials has garnered increasing interest. In 2021, Estonia had two biomethane production plants, producing up to 40 percent of the gas used in transport.

As Estonia is a small country, its administrative structure concerning energy and climate governance is relatively simple. The Ministry of the Economic Affairs and Communications (as of July 2023 the newly established Ministry of Climate) oversees Estonia’s energy policy. The Ministry of Finance has some responsibilities regarding budget preparation for the national “Energy and Climate Plan.” The Ministry of the Environment (from July 2023 onward the Ministry of Climate) coordinates environmental policy and the management of natural resources. A state-owned company for oil security of supply was established in 2005, which was reorganized as a broader security-of-supply organization akin to the Finnish National Emergency Supply Agency (NESA) (see Chapter 6) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A governmental Climate and Energy Committee was established to operate during 2019–2021, with the prime minister chairing this committee, which also had the Minister for the Environment, the Minister for Defence, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs among its members. In 2021, the government established a Green Policy Steering Committee, chaired by the prime minister, to coordinate the implementation of “green policy” across sectors. The ministerial committee is supported by an expert group and makes proposals to the government. In 2023, an expert-based Climate Council was established.

A rather unique feature of Estonian energy policymaking is that there is no agency level. Energy agencies typically regulate and monitor operation of electricity and gas markets as well as emission reductions, or advance energy efficiency. In Estonia, instead, the electricity and gas transmission network operator Elering effectively plays the role of an agency in security of supply. According to an expert interviewee, it is “a quasi-security police or authority.” This role is at least partly due to the large role of electricity in Estonia’s energy transition, namely desynchronization and offshore wind efforts. In addition, before the 2020s, the security-of-supply organization only addressed oil and not electricity. Some regard Elering’s position as a conflict of interest, resulting in little expertise in the public sector:

Eesti Energia, a fully state-owned company, is the main producer of electricity. Ninety percent of oil shale-based electricity was produced by Eesti Energia in 2020 (Sillak and Kanger, Reference Sillak and Kanger2020), but it aims to stop production of electricity from oil shale by 2030 and increase renewable energy production. The company is among the largest employers in Estonia and it is free to make its own investment decisions irrespective of its state ownership (Tõnurist, Reference Tõnurist2015). The dominance of this state-owned monopoly meant that, until 2014, there was little distinction between the management of the oil shale industry and government energy policy; an attempt to reduce the influence of the industry on energy policymaking was made by transferring the company’s ownership from the Ministry of Economic Affairs to the Ministry of Finance in 2014 (Kama, Reference Kama2016). Nonetheless, it still appears that the company has more influence on Estonian energy policy than policymaking has had on the company.

Several political figures and civil servants in Estonia have held both ministry positions and positions in the energy industry. For example, Taavi Veskimägi has been the Minister of Finance (2003–2005) and the director of the transmission system operator Elering (2009–2023). In addition, at least four individuals interviewed have worked for the energy sector (Elering or Eesti Energia) and the Ministry for Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the Ministry of the Interior. This is partly explained by the small population of the country, that is, there is a limited number of experts, but also by the nature of informal energy relations and the tightknit relations of the “energy elite.”

Another important feature is the relatively late growth of the formalized environmental movement in Estonia. The Estonian Green Party was only established in 2007, despite the fact environmentalism has played an important role in Estonia’s independence pursuits since the 1980s (Auer, Reference Auer1998). The Renewable Energy Council was formed in 2011 by renewable energy entrepreneurs and associations, becoming a vocal advocacy group and proposing a plan for transitioning the country’s energy system into a 100 percent renewable energy system (Sillak and Kanger, Reference Sillak and Kanger2020).

Since 2004, when Estonia became an EU member state, its energy and climate policy has been shaped by the EU. Estonia had already applied for membership in 1995 but, according to an interviewed expert, was unable to join then because its oil shale industry conflicted with EU environmental objectives. Eventually, the EU agreed to give oil shale a temporary status, prolonging the deadline for renovating old power plants to meet EU air-quality standards until 2016, allowing Estonia until 2013 to fully open up its electricity market, and allocating research and development (R&D) support for reducing the environmental impacts of oil shale (Sillak and Kanger, Reference Sillak and Kanger2020).

Despite these early concessions, Estonia has taken some time to liberalize and decarbonize its energy regime. When the electricity market was fully opened up in 2013, Eesti Energia maintained a significant role in the market. Throughout the years, Estonia has managed to keep large part of the energy production under state ownership, even though this is at least partly contradictory to EU energy market rules. Kama (Reference Kama2016) has noted that “[t]his state-regulated and extremely carbon-intensive sector has shown remarkable resistance to liberalisation, unbundling and privatisation; the three neoliberal modes of energy governance that underpin the policies of the EU, the OECD, and international donor agencies” (p. 836). She continues:

Likewise, oil shale has not been addressed to the degree it should have according to EU requirements. When oil prices declined and the price of EU emissions-trading permits rose, the oil shale market became less lucrative. In response to this, the Estonian government lowered environmental taxes to support the industry, justifying this action by claiming the fuel was important for national interests, such as security and employment (Holmgren et al., Reference Holmgren, Pever and Fischer2019). In 2019, the International Energy Agency (IEA) noted in its country review of Estonia that “the negative externalities of fossil fuels are currently not sufficiently reflected in the existing tax rates and there is a significant number of tax exemptions and reduced tax rates which are counterproductive for meeting the climate targets” (IEA, 2019, p. 28). An interviewee noted that:

During 2017–2018, Estonia prepared some key documents for its medium-term energy and climate policy, including the “National Development Plan for the Energy Sector until 2030” and the “Estonian National Energy and Climate Plan 2030,” submitted to the EU. Estonia aimed to reduce greenhouse gases 70 percent by 2023 and 80 percent by 2025 by increasing renewable energy (above 25 percent of total energy use), while simultaneously maintaining a high level of energy security by limiting fuel imports, diversifying energy sources and supplies, and connecting with the European electricity market. In the baseline year for emission reductions, 1990, the greenhouse gas emissions were so high, 40,233.79 tons of CO2 equivalent, that it was relatively easy to reduce these by 20 percent by 2020 as required by the EU. The greenhouse gas emissions had dropped almost by half already by 1993 and were on the same level until 2018. Further, Estonia aimed to produce 50 percent of domestic final electricity consumption via renewables by 2030. Wind energy and solar energy for electricity production were planned to be further developed, and biomass use increased for heating. Biofuels and hydrogen fuels were also to be developed, the latter being on the agenda of the Green Policy Steering Committee. The plans were updated in fall 2023. The revised plans show an aim to achieve 24 percent reduction in emissions by 2023 compared to 2005, and net-zero emissions by 2050.

Energy independence from Russia has been the cornerstone of Estonian energy policy since its independence. Its EU membership has, however, forced Estonia to change its traditional energy policy and pay attention to the decarbonization of its energy system, which has impacted its energy independence to some extent. This decarbonization process has been slow on both security and economic grounds. Despite the ambitious plans for renewable energy and energy efficiency, oil shale has continued to play an important role in energy policy. The “National Development Plan for the Use of Oil Shale 2016–2030” stated that oil shale will remain an important fuel. The “National Development Plan for the Energy Sector” also mentioned the possibility of new investments in the oil shale sector to increase energy exports. If this continues, it will be hard to lower Estonia’s ecological footprint. Figure 5.2 summarizes the key aspects of the Estonian energy regime.

Figure 5.2

Key aspects of Estonian energy policy.

5.2 Security Regime

In Estonia, security policy is the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence. The Ministry of the Interior and its agencies play a supportive role, with responsibility for policing, border control, rescue, migration, and immigration management. For information security, different ministries have their own responsibilities, coordinated by the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Communications. The ministries of defence, of the interior, and of foreign affairs also have important tasks with regard to cybersecurity. At the agency level, the Foreign Intelligence Service and Estonian Security Policy Board are important.

Estonia joined NATO in 2004, and this move has had a large impact on its security policy and defence spending. The latter has gradually increased from 1.39 percent of GDP in 2006 to 2.35 percent in 2022. After Russia’s actions in 2014 in Crimea, Estonia has become “a meaningful player in NATO’s management of renewed Russian security threats” (Studemeyer, Reference Studemeyer2019, p. 789). The capital city Tallinn hosts the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. Estonia has developed leading expertise in cybersecurity for NATO, alongside with prioritizing its membership fees to it, even during times of economic austerity (Studemeyer, Reference Studemeyer2019).

Estonian Defence Forces were reestablished immediately after independence (Piirimäe, Reference Piirimäe2020). They consist of 4,000 people in permanent readiness and another 4,000 in supplementary reserve. Thirty thousand reservists have also been trained by the Defence Forces (Estonian Defence Forces, 2023).

Security and defence governance are strongly based on the country’s history with Russia. Alongside the other Baltic countries, after its independence Estonia sought security by integrating with Western structures: the EU and NATO. The latter led to a revision of security and defence strategies that are reactive to changes in the surrounding geopolitical environment (Piotrowski, Reference Piotrowski2018). Despite becoming an EU member state, Estonia’s foreign policymakers have maintained a traditional realist approach to the East, their security policy “driven by an existential concern about national security,” with the hard security guarantees of NATO being a cornerstone of the country’s security policy (Raik and Rikmann, Reference Raik and Rikmann2021, p. 606). These reflect thinking along the lines of “negative security” (cf. Hoogensen Gjørv, Reference Hoogensen Gjørv2012). Eurosceptic views have been present all the time but were marginalized until 2015, when the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) won 8 percent of the parliamentary seats and later expanded its populist presence in government politics (Raik and Rikmann, Reference Raik and Rikmann2021).

The security risk from Russian interference is perceived as tangible even after three decades of independence and before Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022. The elevated perception of risk is not only due to historical factors. It has been influenced by the very slow withdrawal of Russian troops after independence, with some thousand soldiers remaining until August 1994 and an “increasingly aggressive Kremlin policy towards its neighbouring countries” (Piotrowski, Reference Piotrowski2018, p. 47).

Security policy in Estonia is based on a broad security concept. This means the capability of the state to defend its values and objectives from military and nonmilitary risks. Security policy aims to guarantee independence, sovereignty, survival, and the constitutional order. The key policy documents for security and defence policy are the “National Security Concept of Estonia” (2017) and the “National Defence Development Plan 2017–2026.”

There is a specific focus on cybersecurity because Estonia is one of the most digitalized societies in the world. Besides Estonians being among the highest internet and mobile broadband users, the country had already installed 100 percent smart electricity metering by 2016, improving network management (IEA, 2019). Cyberattacks from Russia are some of the most concrete threats that Estonia has more recently experienced. Russia considers Estonia as “ideologically unfriendly” and has tried to cause economic disruption by putting pressure on and maintaining tensions between the Russian nationals in Estonia and the Estonian population via cyberattacks (Studemeyer, Reference Studemeyer2019). Following a sequence of nationwide cyberattacks in 2007, Estonia decided to develop its cyber expertise, including the first governmental cybersecurity strategy in 2008, by providing university-level education in this field, and establishing a “cyber defence league” to act under its own military command in case of war (Crandall, Reference Crandall2014).

Two government strategy documents relate to cybersecurity: the “Digital Agenda 2020 for Estonia” (2018) and the “Cybersecurity Strategy” (2019). This preparedness is valid, as the risk of cyberattacks appear to be rising. Figure 5.3 summarizes the key aspects of Estonian security and defence policy.

Figure 5.3

Key aspects of Estonian security and defence policy.

5.3 Perceptions of Russia as a Landscape Pressure at the Intersection of Energy and Security

This section examines landscape pressure for the energy transition in Estonia, focusing on the ways in which perceptions of Russia as a landscape pressure for Estonian energy policy have formed. Policy documents from the period 2006–2020 mentioned a range of factors that can be interpreted as landscape pressures (Kivimaa and Sivonen, Reference Kivimaa and Sivonen2021). In 2006–2010, these included globally growing competition over energy, risks of cyberattacks, and land-use-related conflicts. At that time, the documents pictured Russia as a substantial landscape pressure and a global superpower ready to utilize military force as well as energy as political tools in international relations. Policy document material was limited during 2011–2015, so landscape pressures were more difficult to detect. Uncertainties in global energy markets and risk of attacks against energy and digital systems were mentioned. During 2016–2020, similar pressures as in the first period of analysis were mentioned. However, Russia was mentioned less, and instead the instability of the global economy and international finance were emphasized. Nevertheless, Estonia has quite consistently perceived Russia as a significant landscape factor, shaping the Estonian state’s actions in energy and security policies.

Perhaps due to deep historical and cultural issues, alongside the rather short period of independence from Russia, perceptions of Russia as exerting a substantial landscape pressure on the Estonian energy regime are prevalent in the expert interviews. Thirteen out of sixteen interviewees considered Russia to be a considerable security risk in the energy–security nexus both prior to and post 2022.

The impact of this risk is evident in the plan of the Estonian state to desynchronize its electricity system from Russia and in complicating the oil shale phaseout in Ida-Viru County (see details in Section 5.5). The direct impact of this landscape pressure has been the slowed-down destabilization of the domestic (oil shale-based) part of the fossil fuel regime, as such pressure was largely not supportive of renewable energy niche development before 2022 (see also Sillak and Kanger, Reference Sillak and Kanger2020).

Although most of the interviewed experts were in consensus, the perceptions of three interviewees differed. Two experts were somewhat more positive about the influence of Russia, although they still recognized certain risks.

One interviewed politician mentioned that Russia has been a stable energy partner to Estonia and, contrary to others, believed that desynchronizing from the Russian grid might increase instability:

The perceptions of Russia as a landscape pressure were largely unchanged as a result of the 2022 attack on Ukraine, due to the preexisting negative perceptions. One interviewee mentioned that, after, things were even more openly discussed as a result. Another interviewee noted:

The analysis shows that Russia has been perceived as a dominant landscape pressure for Estonian energy policy from the security perspective. This pressure has remained throughout the studied period, from 2006 until 2023.

5.4 Policy Coherence and Interplay

Policy coherence and integration were studied by focusing on synergies, conflicts, and administrative integration between the policy domains of energy and security/defence. To do this, analyses were conducted on Estonia’s key energy and security policy strategies, published during 2006–2020, and interviews conducted in 2020–2021 and 2022–2023. The results of these analyses have been published in journal articles (Kivimaa, Reference Kivimaa2022; Kivimaa and Sivonen, Reference Kivimaa and Sivonen2021) and some of the key findings are summarized in this section.

It is very clear that security from the Russian threat has played a significant role in Estonia’s energy policymaking – resulting in a rather unique approach among EU countries prior to 2022, when the focus in the EU was mostly directed toward open and competitive energy markets. A moderate-to-high integration of security was already visible in Estonia’s energy policy documents during 2006–2010 – market collaboration with Europe, oil shale, and diversification of supply being the key means to achieve this (Kivimaa and Sivonen, Reference Kivimaa and Sivonen2021). This integration has become even more visible since 2016.

Kivimaa and Sivonen (Reference Kivimaa and Sivonen2021) noted that energy–security integration has been observable in policy objectives, policy measures, and policy processes alike. However, the objectives have been conflicting from the perspective of decarbonization, emphasizing both oil shale extraction and wind power development. In the policy documents of 2016–2020, security was visible in the objective to redefine security of supply for operational continuity even when transmission capacity between EU member states is lost. Among measures, the energy (de)synchronization project has been vital; the institutional change has been easier to achieve, while technologically the project has not yet been completed. Policy strategy documents have also focused on cybersecurity readiness measures and investments in additional prewarning systems for defence to enable offshore wind development. This kind of integration is better achieved by involving Ministers of Defence and of Foreign Affairs in the government Climate and Energy Committee, which Estonia has done. The strong security aspect was also very visible in the use of the term “readiness of war” as an important principle for the development of energy systems. Such language was rarely used in other European countries prior to the events of 2022.

Although security from Russia has played a substantial role in Estonia’s energy policy, the document analysis showed energy issues were not substantially addressed in the country’s defence and security strategy documents; less so than in Finland’s, for example (Kivimaa and Sivonen, Reference Kivimaa and Sivonen2021). This lack of integration may also explain the difficulties and slow progress with offshore wind power expansion.

An analysis of expert interviews from 2020 to 2021 also shows evidence of insufficient formal integration of energy and security policies. Justified on the basis of small country size, it was seen that in areas where policy coherence has been achieved this has been the result of informal connections and bottom-up problem-solving exercises. Strategies, objectives, or shared visions in bringing together energy and security policies have been missing (Kivimaa, Reference Kivimaa2022). Yet some concrete policy decisions have supported improved coherence between energy and security considerations despite the absence of supportive processes. Importantly, these include the desynchronization process and the decision to invest in new radar technology to allow for the expansion of wind power.

As in many countries, the “National Security Strategy” has framed energy as critical infrastructure and a vital element of national defence. This pursuit is mainly visible in the strategy as ambitions to intensify collaboration with the EU, the Baltic States, and the US, and to keep using oil shale in a “rational” manner – instead of more concrete action proposals. The continued use of oil shale has created a substantial conflict with the progress of the zero-carbon energy transition. Another observed potential conflict was the impact of oil shale phaseout on internal stability in Ida-Viru County. This is explained in more detail in Section 5.5.

Despite the existence and acknowledgment of these conflicts, formal mechanisms and strategies for advancing coherence between the policy domains of energy and of defence and security have been lacking. Policymaking has been reliant on informal communications between the actors in charge. There was a lot of divergence in how actors with expertise on energy and security observed this interaction between the two administrative sectors during 2020–2021. Some agreement that the interaction between key ministries has improved did, however, did exist.

On the positive side,

And, on the negative side,

While this informal way of working may be a fluid means of policymaking in a country with a population of only 1.4 million people, it allows for a chance element in dealing with potentially pressing issues that tie energy to security and it has reduced the transparency of public administration, as indicated by the interview comments from external actors. As seen with the case of wind power, sustainability transitions may not advance rapidly enough when reliant on informal interactions for integration and coherence. This is also visible in the complications around the phaseout of oil shale; a phaseout that is inevitable if Estonia is to achieve decarbonization of its energy system and the EU emissions target.

A rather significant shift on this front happened following the events of 2022, given that the Estonian state administration had not given much thought to formalizing the energy–security interface before then. A concrete act was that the energy trade with Russia ceased. Another measure departing from previous practice was acquiring the joint LNG terminal with Finland:

Several interviewees remarked that energy issues became politicized after the 2022 crisis, but not securitized in their eyes. It appears that some change in narratives occurred although the risks had already been recognized. Perhaps the most obvious change is cross-political party support for continuing oil shale production, which was a more contentious issue before, while some also reported improved understanding of how energy transition can improve security:

More broadly, some experts saw that the shock from the war created positive synergies between energy and security by mobilizing society and increasing communication and interaction between the ministries. The effect, however, seems to have been an increase in volume rather than formalization of previously informal relations:

As a result, the administration conducted activities to stimulate the acceleration of renewable energy, such as setting up new, more ambitious goals for renewable energy, speeding up permissions to erect wind turbines, and identifying gaps in legislation potentially hindering renewable energy deployment – contributing to the process of expectation-building in niche development. These measures were influenced by the RePowerEU policy launched in May 2022 by the European Commission in response to the energy crisis:

At the same time, activities to support the existing fossil fuel regime have continued due to the energy crisis. These include the LNG project, establishing a new natural gas reserve (stockpiling), and slower decommissioning of combustion plants, and these have partially restabilized the regime despite decreasing gas consumption during the energy crisis. The stockpiling was perceived by one interviewee as a shift from market-based thinking to a more security-oriented one.

More broadly, the last few years have seen increased focus on critical infrastructure; in other words, the vulnerability of cross-country underwater energy interconnections on which Estonia is dependent, as well as Russian control over the cooling water used by Estonia’s Narva power plant. One expert noted that this risk had been acknowledged previously but the likelihood assessed as negligible – now all risks are reviewed from a different perspective. Section 5.5 illustrates three different cases that highlight how energy and security have interacted within Estonian policymaking.

5.5 Niche Development, Regime (De)stabilization, and Positive and Negative Security

In the analysis of expert interviews, three specific cases that relate to niche development and regime destabilization clearly emerged in the energy–security interface in Estonia. The first one deals with the importance of oil shale and the potential economic and geopolitical security concerns that are arising from the phaseout of oil shale in one of Estonia’s poorest regions, which also has a significant Russian-speaking population. The second issue connects to the arduous expansion of wind power and how it has been impacted by the operation of the defence regime’s air surveillance radars. The third interesting issue is the desynchronization of Baltic countries from Russia’s electricity system, where the principal driver has been that of national security, but the move can also be seen to benefit the zero-carbon energy transition. Hence, the three issues relate to the destabilization of the existing energy regime, niche expansion, and regime reconfiguration via the desynchronization project.

An emerging issue related to the expansion of the renewable energy niche is the supply of critical minerals and metals needed for renewable energy technologies. However, this is not discussed here as a specific case, because during the 2020–2021 interviews this aspect was not debated as a security-related challenge in Estonia by the interviewees. The topic did receive attention during the later interviews. For instance, a decision has been made to invest in critical materials-related R&D, while expanding mining activity has its own environmental consequences. Developments have also occurred in the manufacturing side. Silmet, an Estonian subsidiary of the Canadian company Neo Performance Materials (NPM), has announced plans to build a magnet factory and an R&D center in Narva. Therefore, the critical materials question is pertinent for the future development of the energy–security nexus in Estonia. Section 5.5.1 discusses the three cases outlined.

5.6 Concluding Remarks

Estonia is an interesting case of how “negative security” interests, that is, threats to national security and geopolitics, tie into energy policy and how this, on the one hand, complicates and slows down the zero-carbon energy transition while, on the other, has also advanced it to a degree by the country disconnecting from Russian fossil fuel supplies. Energy has been, to a degree, securitized since Estonia’s independence, and is mainly thought of from the perspective of negative security (security against threats; see Gjørv, Reference Gjørv2012). The substantial threat of Russia has been the prevalent landscape pressure on the energy regime, although other landscape pressures have also been noted – such as climate change, cyber risks, and globally increasing energy demand.

Due to the perceived high Russian landscape threat, first, the impact of wind turbine niche expansion on defence radars made the Ministry of Defence cautious about wind power until recently and, second, there has been caution regarding how Russia would react to the phaseout of oil shale located in the bordering Ida-Viru County, which has a large Russian-speaking population. EU just transition efforts in connection to supporting the oil shale phaseout, that is, regime destabilization, and to new industrial activity in Ida-Viru County, have introduced an element of “positive security” into the Estonian energy–security nexus. These efforts have addressed the well-being effects of the energy transition in this relatively poor region. Yet this is contrasted with diverging political interests related to resistance to EU energy policies.

Progress around electricity network integration with Central Europe, which reduces the energy independence of Estonia, resonates with ideas around redefining energy security by accessing cross-border grid communities (cf. Blondeel et al., Reference Blondeel, Bradshaw, Bridge and Kuzemko2021). Yet this aim coexists with the old security narrative constructed around oil shale and energy independence. Relatively little attention has been paid by policy actors to the security implications of the expansion of the energy “niches,” such as solar and wind power, while these implications have clearly increased via newly emerging attention paid to critical materials. More broadly, the extensive efforts already made by Estonia in cybersecurity will also help address the security implications of a new energy system based on renewable energy and the expanding interconnected electricity system. Figure 5.4 summarizes key energy security aspects and their impact on energy transition in Estonia.

Figure 5.4

Key energy security aspects and their transition impacts in Estonia, 2006–2023.

Source: Kivimaa, Finnish Environment Institute, 2023.

The events of 2022 changed the energy–security nexus. Although security was already present in energy policymaking (more so than the presence of energy in security policymaking), the dialogue became more open after 2022. New solutions for wind power were sought even more actively, with additional radars enabling wind power niche expansion as a measure to improve the security of energy supply. At the same time, however, fossil fuels were restabilized by a new gas reserve, a joint LNG terminal with Finland, and improved political consensus about continuing oil shale production at least for some time. It remains to be seen how these two aims will be balanced in the years to come.

The conflicts situated on the energy–security interface involving oil shale phaseout and the expansion of wind power have had a significant hindering effect on the zero-carbon energy transition in Estonia. These conflicts are unlikely to be resolved immediately due to heightened attention on geopolitical security since Russia’s attack on Ukraine in the winter of 2022. However, recent institutional changes have supported the zero-carbon energy transition, most importantly the goal for 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030, set in 2022. Nevertheless, the EU decarbonization targets and Estonian renewable energy niche actors face a counterforce of strong and established energy regime actors and entrenched party politics. The perceptions and established networks of these regime actors may be hard to overcome. Informal governance structures could be employed for flexibility but may also cause a barrier for new entrants and result in a lack of transparency regarding the energy–security nexus.

Finland is a small Northern European country in population terms, with only 5.5 million residents. Yet it covers a rather large geographical area – 338,440 square kilometers. The country is situated between Russia in the east, Sweden in the west, and Norway in the north. Estonia is only around 50 kilometers away, across the Gulf of Finland. In the past, Finland has been both a part of Sweden and of Russia, with independence gained in 1917. Both historical connections have partly influenced energy policymaking in Finland, and the country has had active energy trade across eastern and western borders, with the former halted after Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022.

Since World War II, Finland has gradually transformed from an agricultural society to a technological one, where the development of the forest and telecommunications industries was particularly significant. The forest industry has had a profound influence on both the demand for energy and the use of forests. Early on, the industry became an energy producer because postwar industrialization raised energy consumption. Hence, forest industry companies invested in electricity production from hydropower and established their own energy company, Pohjolan Voima (PVO), in 1943. In the 1970s, PVO expanded with condensation and nuclear power plant investments. Innovation in pulp and paper production processes enabled forest industry companies to produce bioenergy via their byproducts from the 1980s and 1990s onward, improving the energy economy of the forest industry. After recession in the early 1990s, the telecommunications industry acted as a spearhead for innovation policy. This industry experienced somewhat of a decline after Microsoft purchased global telecoms leader Nokia in 2014 and, later, ended most of its operations in Finland.

Finland is a rather interesting case to study energy–security relations for multiple reasons. First, its domestically available fuels are limited. Besides wood fuels, Finland uses peat in energy production. Peat provided 7 percent of total energy consumption in its peak year in 2007 but, in 2021, was reduced to 2.7 percent of total energy consumption (Statistics Finland, 2023), with a policy goal to halve the use of peat from the 2020 level by 2030 (Figure 6.1). During the 1993–2012 period, peat provided a minimum of 5 percent of Finland’s energy consumption. A strong peat lobby has existed since the 2000s, utilizing security as an argument when favorable. One campaign occurred after the 2006 gas disruptions between Russia and Ukraine, resonating with fears and concerns about energy availability and price (Lempinen, Reference Lempinen2019). Following the events of 2022, policies for the peat phaseout were temporarily relaxed and an emergency stockpile of peat created. This case is explored further later in this chapter.

Figure 6.1

Percentage shares of peat in Finland’s total energy consumption, 2000–2022.

Source: Statistics Finland (2023).

Second, Finland is a neighboring country to Russia, with a 1,340-kilometer shared border, which has meant defence preparedness since Finland’s independence in 1917. However, the country also experienced a culture of “Finlandization” after World War II, described as the “adaptive acquiescence to the will of the Kremlin during the Cold War” (Arter, Reference Arter2000, p. 688). This was followed by the search for positive business relations with Russia and with the avoidance of negative remarks toward Russia in energy policy, and more generally in public discussion. Even after the EU imposed sanctions on Russia after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Finland kept shoring up its relations to Russian energy value chains and maintained the framing of Russian energy (merely) as an economic topic (Höysniemi, Reference Höysniemi2022). At the same time, Finland has maintained strong territorial defences in the post-Cold War era due to its historical experiences with Russia (Pesu and Iso-Markku, Reference Pesu and Iso-Markku2020).

Third, in 2019, the coalition government led by the Social Democrats set an ambitious climate policy goal of a carbon-neutral society by 2035, while the previous government had decided to ban the use of coal in energy generation by 2029. These moves have been supported by the already declining trend of the share of fossil fuels in Finland’s energy production from about 2010 and an acceleration of new renewable energy sources, especially wind power, from about 2014. During the initial study period 2006–2021, prior to the European energy crisis, the share of oil decreased from 25 percent to 19 percent, coal from 14 percent to 6 percent, and natural gas from 11 percent to 5 percent (Statistics Finland, 2023). While the overall share of natural gas was low in 2022, this was still problematic for Finland because all the natural gas had been imported from Russia. Finland managed to secure a liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessel to compensate for some gas supplies. This is the setting in which the analysis of security and energy transitions takes place.

This chapter presents the country case study of Finland. It first describes Finland’s energy and security regimes. It then continues with the analytical sections, drawing on Chapter 4: namely, the perceptions of Russia as a landscape for energy transitions; policy coherence and interplay between energy and security regimes including the level of securitization; and, finally, positive and negative security related to niche development and regime (de)stabilization. The project this book is based on studied Finland’s energy and security-related government strategies published since 2006 and conducted two rounds of interviews with energy and security experts, the first between September 2020 and April 2021, and then the second between December 2022 and January 2023. This chapter draws on these materials and on related literature and selected policy reports.

6.1 Energy Regime

The energy sources of the Finnish energy regime are based on a mix: (relatively limited) domestic fuels (wood-based fuels and peat) and imports of coal, oil, and natural gas (which have been significant since World War II). Therefore, wood has been an important energy source directly and via forest industry byproducts. The decarbonization of the electricity sector has already reduced dependence on these energy forms but transport – and to a lesser degree heating – still rely on imported oil and natural gas. Overall, the energy profile has been variable with no single source dominating.

Finland has a relatively fixed amount of hydropower as an important balancing capacity, with its further construction restricted since the 1980s for nature protection reasons and because the largest rivers were already utilized for hydropower in the 1960s. While, in the 1950s, over 90 percent of Finland’s electricity was produced by hydropower (Kivimaa, Reference Kivimaa, Lafferty and Ruud2008), hydroelectric plants began to face opposition from local communities due to disrupted fishing and farming activities, leading to increased support for nuclear power in the 1960s and 1970s (Myllyntaus, Reference Myllyntaus1991). Finland, therefore, heavily relies on hydropower-based electricity imports from Sweden and Norway.

Nuclear power has been part of the mix since the late 1970s, spurred by the worldwide oil crises of that time. In the 1970s and 1980s, four nuclear reactors were constructed. Half a century later, in 2022, the fifth nuclear reactor, Olkiluoto 3, began operating, but suffered from technical difficulties, limiting production, so only began full operation in 2023, about fifteen years behind the initial schedule. Attitudes to nuclear power have varied over time. The pronuclear group has aimed to depoliticize nuclear power with argumentation about technical safety, while the antinuclear camp has aimed to make the issue more political (Ylönen et al., Reference Ylönen, Litmanen, Kojo and Lindell2017), raising nontechnical questions related to nuclear power.

Biofuels were important in the early 2000s, especially in the form of black liquor, a byproduct of the forest industry, and later also via the direct use of wood for energy. Besides this, various forms of biofuels and technologies have characterized the development of bioenergy (Kivimaa, Reference Kivimaa, Lafferty and Ruud2008), alongside a battle for the use of wood for different purposes. Bioenergy was initially perceived as “the fossil-free source” for Finland, but it became more contentious when wood energy’s real impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and on carbon sinks became more widely considered in the EU. Increasing concern has been placed on the reducing carbon sink of the forests when the use of wood has increased.

The year 2013 was described as the time when the wind power niche began taking off in Finland (Haukkala, Reference Haukkala2018). Wind power has developed rapidly since 2014, contributing almost 12,000 gigawatt hours and 14 percent of electricity consumption in 2022 (Finland’s Wind Power Association, 2023). The capacity in 2022 was circa 5,677 megawatts (MW), with further 44,000 MW land-based and 10,000 MW offshore wind power structures planned (Finland’s Wind Power Association, 2022).

Another dominant feature of the Finnish energy regime is the district heating system initiated in the 1950s that covers about a half of Finland’s residential and service buildings, and is closer to 90 percent in cities (Schönach, Reference Schönach2021). However, this is partly being replaced by an expansion of ground-source and air-source heat pumps as more sustainable heating sources than hydrocarbon and biomass-powered district heating. The expansion is taking place especially in detached housing stock, while for larger buildings district heating still dominates. The district heating system is seen as an important means of energy storage, especially considering the shifts currently taking place toward the advancement of electrification.

Fortum, a partially government-owned company, is the largest provider of heat and power. It had heavily expanded into Russia prior to 2022 and it owned part of the German Uniper corporation before Uniper’s economic difficulties in the same year and until the German government bought Fortum’s share of Uniper. The second-largest energy company is Helsinki Energy, operating in the capital region and owned by the city of Helsinki. The manufacturing industry-owned PVO and the Swedish energy company Vattenfall are the third- and fourth-largest energy sellers.

The governance of the Finnish energy regime has been perceived as rather consensus-seeking and stable, with a small number of the (largely nonparty political) energy elite in power (Kainiemi et al., Reference Kainiemi, Karhunmaa and Eloneva2020; Ruostetsaari, Reference Ruostetsaari2010). There are close connections between certain economic interest groups and public authorities, where these groups can influence policymaking, for instance, regarding energy and the natural environment (from here onward “the environment”) (Vesa et al., Reference Vesa, Gronow and Ylä-Anttila2020). Interestingly, citizens have high trust in experts as decision-makers and are less keen for politicians to be in charge (Ruostetsaari, Reference Ruostetsaari2017). This has made it easier to depoliticize energy-related issues. The energy elite that consists of influential actors has, in turn, given more weight to economic competitiveness than climate change, the environment, or security (Ruostetsaari, Reference Ruostetsaari2017; Vesa et al., Reference Vesa, Gronow and Ylä-Anttila2020). Nonetheless, in 2009, strategic policymaking assumed that fossil fuels will remain the most important energy sources in the coming decades (PMO, 2009), while, in the same year, the Energy Industries Federation published a vision for carbon-neutral energy. Many incumbent energy actors neither pursued the energy transition actively nor perceived Russia as a security threat (Höysniemi, Reference Höysniemi2022; Kainiemi et al., Reference Kainiemi, Karhunmaa and Eloneva2020). Therefore, the events of 2022 functioned as a major “landscape shock” to the established energy governance system, requiring a new kind of perspective that also accounted for geopolitical security.

As a result of the established energy governance system in Finland, Russia maintained its position as a major energy exporter to the country until 2022. During the 2006–2011 period, 12–14 percent of electricity was imported from Russia, but experienced a major decline in 2012, when capacity payments introduced in Russia made export less profitable. Nevertheless, the share of electricity imports experienced a gradual increase subsequently, apart from 2020, when electricity was very inexpensive in the Nordic countries (see Figure 6.2). For other energy sources, the import dependence has been higher – in total 34 percent in 2021 – the largest imported source being oil, followed by nuclear power, natural gas, wood fuels, and coal (Statistics Finland, 2022). A gas pipeline was built from Russia to Finland in the 1970s and 100 percent of natural gas used in Finland came from Russia before 2022. In addition, the oil refinery of Neste Oil specialized in refining Russian oil. Replacing the imports following 2022 was possible, but the prices of energy commodities rose very sharply (Oesch, Reference Oesch2022), experiencing up to tenfold increases in consumer prices.

Figure 6.2

The amount of electricity import from Russia to Finland and its share of total electricity consumption, 2006–2023.

Source: Statistics Finland (2023).

Energy governance is diffused between different ministries. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment (MEE) has an energy department that coordinates Finnish climate and energy policy and is responsible for energy production and fuel-related issues – the latter together with the ministries of transport and communications (MTC) and of agriculture and forestry (MAF). The Ministry of the Environment oversees building energy efficiency and use, and international climate change negotiations, while the MTC is in charge of transport energy efficiency and use. This can be described as a fragmented energy governance setting.

The National Emergency Supply Authority (NESA) is an essential actor for energy security and other sectors’ security of supply, its budget being based on security of supply payments from companies. Its tasks include the coordination of preparedness cooperation between public and private sectors, overseeing arrangements related to national emergency stockpiles, ensuring the functionality of essential technical systems, safeguarding critical goods and service production, and monitoring international developments (NESA, 2023).

NESA reports that the Energy Sector Pools, consisting of public and private actors who prepare for emergencies and exceptional circumstances, have recently been reorganized to match with the changes created by the energy transition. For example, the new Heating Pool is building preparedness skills for nonfossil-based heating and the role of the Power Pool is growing as electricity is increasingly used to replace other energy forms (NESA, 2022). The pools are one example of the collaborative public–private governance culture adopted in Finland for many issues. Another example of this culture is the cooperation between public and private actors from different sectors in drafting fossil-free roadmaps during 2021 and again in 2024.

Since about 2013, new actors, such as the Clean Energy Association and the Climate Leadership Coalition, have challenged the established energy governance system, alongside the Green Party and environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (Haukkala, Reference Haukkala2018; Kainiemi et al., Reference Kainiemi, Karhunmaa and Eloneva2020). Attempts to make the energy transition more visible in party political and government program agendas included, during the 2014–2015 preparliamentary election period, a push from temporary actors, such as the Professor Group on Energy Policy, the Energy Renovation Group (Kainiemi et al., Reference Kainiemi, Karhunmaa and Eloneva2020), and the New Energy Policy Initiative (Haukkala, Reference Haukkala2018). The pursuits of these new actors have also been supported by some governance changes. For instance, the Finnish Climate Change Panel, composed of fifteen academics selected for one four-year term at a time, has become an important body that advises the government on climate and energy matters and responds to climate change-related consultations regarding new strategies and policy proposals. These have led, importantly, to a decision to phase out coal power together with speeding up favorable policies for renewable energy. Despite the advances made, very little disruptive institutional work has taken place (Kainiemi et al., Reference Kainiemi, Karhunmaa and Eloneva2020). Despite the coal phaseout plan, the prolonged debate about the fate of peat – tying in conflicting interests and concerns about employment, energy security, and the environment – is not over (Lempinen, Reference Lempinen2019). Moreover, there were calls to establish a new science advice panel on forests and the bioeconomy to create pushback to environmentally oriented preexisting science panels the Climate Change Panel and the Nature Panel; ironically, the new science panel has given similar advice to the older ones.

One of the key obstacles to both the energy transition and the broader consideration of security in Finnish energy policy has been the energy policy department of the MEE. Multiple studies have described it being stuck in an economic mindset favoring incumbent forms of energy production. For instance, Höysniemi (Reference Höysniemi2022) describes market-driven and technocratic governance, while Kivimaa (Reference Kivimaa2022) outlines a dominant economic perspective with little attention paid to security and the environment. Further, the ministry has been unwilling to disclose the assumptions in its “Climate and Energy Strategy” scenarios to outsiders (Kainiemi et al., Reference Kainiemi, Karhunmaa and Eloneva2020). Overall, the energy department has been slow to change and has lacked an innovation-oriented approach, despite being placed in the same ministry as innovation policy. Some experts, however, argued that the key problem derives from the political level, which has resulted in the fragmented energy governance framework:

The same issue of political decision-making influencing how the public administration is organized and coordinated has affected the policy interplay between energy and security governance. I explore this in Section 6.4. Figure 6.3 summarizes the key aspects of Finnish energy policy.

Figure 6.3

Key aspects of Finnish energy policy.

6.2 Security Regime

After the end of the Cold War, Finnish defence policy changed and the first ever “Security Policy Report” by the government was published in 1995. The traditional components of Finnish defence policy are territorial defence and the Defence Forces, which have gained strong support across different political parties, in essence keeping the possibility of war part of the strategic culture of Finland (Pesu, Reference Pesu2017). It, therefore, has been quite peculiar that this strategic culture has played hardly any role in government energy policy.

Over time, there has been variation in how security and defence policies have been addressed either in combination or separately. Pesu (Reference Pesu2017) argued that to divide the government’s security and defence policy into two separate reports during 2016–2017 was an important decision that returned the defence administration back some of its past attention given to it in political decision-making. While the key focus of Finland’s defence and security policy has been the threat of the East, before the end of the Cold War it was not acceptable to publicly talk about the threat of the Soviet Union, which hindered security discussion altogether. Even after the Cold War, Russia was the most important nation for bilateral trade relations (Nokkala, Reference Nokkala2014).

During 2003–2010, Finland gradually shifted from a total defence approach, meaning military and civil defence, to a broader conceptualization of comprehensive security (Berzina, Reference Berzina2020), tying in both negative and positive security approaches. Comprehensive security means an operational model that relies on safeguarding vital societal functions in collaboration with authorities, businesses, NGOs, and citizens, covering issues such as defence capability, internal security, security of supply, functional capacity, and psychological resilience (Finnish Security Committee, 2017). However, it has meant that it is difficult to define the exact boundaries of Finnish security policy. While threat scenarios have become broader, the role of Russia has remained the same after the Cold War (Nokkala, Reference Nokkala2014). Energy has been mentioned as part of comprehensive security, but the experts interviewed perceived considerations of energy to be on a rather general level. One expert speculated that energy was not, prior to 2022, made a specific component of security policy, perhaps because this would extend discussions to Russia as a security threat directly connected to questions of energy policy – which was avoided at the time. So, energy was kept depoliticized and desecuritized.

The security regime in Finland comprises the defence administration, foreign affairs, and internal security (e.g., the police force), with links to preparatory activities by the National Emergency Supply Organization, comprising NESA and a broader network of companies. The Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of the Interior are important governing actors for security. The Defence Forces operate under the Ministry of Defence. The Ministerial Committee on Foreign and Security Policy is one of four statutory ministerial committees and meets with the President of the Republic to prepare important parts of Finland’s foreign and security policy. Defence spending has, since 2010, ranged from 1.22 percent of GDP in 2017 and 2018 to 1.96 percent in 2022 (MoD, 2023).

Since about 2010, the defence administration has had to adopt responsibility for new areas. These include, for instance, cybersecurity and climate change. The first “Cybersecurity Strategy” was published in 2013. Cybersecurity issues are located administratively in different places but coordinated by the National Cyber Security Centre placed in the Transport and Communications Agency Traficom. From 2019, cybersecurity in Finland has relied on the national “Cyber Security Strategy” from 2019, international collaboration, and guidance given to companies and other organizations.

The first “Climate Program of the Defence Forces” was published in 2014, initially mostly addressing the energy consumption and efficiency of the defence premises. The third “Climate and Energy Program of the Defence Forces 2022–2025” broadened the focus. It highlighted that the Defence Forces must prepare for the societal transition and recognized that their operation cannot remain solely dependent on fossil fuels in the long term (Finnish Defence Forces, 2022).

Besides the formal security and defence authorities, the National Defence Courses have been running since the 1960s, inviting important members of society to participate. It is a Finnish particularity that aims to improve collaboration between different societal sectors during exceptional circumstances and advance networking between actors operating on comprehensive security.

Overall, there were relatively few changes to the security regime during the study period from 2006 onward, until Finland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2023. The Finnish security regime has been well prepared for the geopolitical risks from Russia too. What has been lacking is its sufficient coordination with the energy regime (see Section 6.4) and perhaps quite slow awakening to questions of climate change and climate security. Figure 6.4 shows the key aspects of defence and security policy in Finland.

Figure 6.4

Key aspects of Finnish defence and security policy.

6.3 Perceptions of Russia as a Landscape Pressure at the Intersection of Energy and Security

Here, I explore landscape pressures, especially how perceptions of Russia by energy and security actors have formed landscape pressure on Finland’s energy policy and how these perceptions have changed over time. During 2006–2010, the main landscape pressures pertaining to the energy–security nexus in government strategies were the increasing international competition for energy, climate change, and the risk of marine disasters. Russia was at that time called the EU’s most important trading partner, although this interdependence was acknowledged to be a security risk. During 2011–2015, the strategy documents began to delve more deeply into Russian issues, Arctic developments, and climate change and how they could constitute potential security risks, while cross-border threats, also including disruptions in energy supply, were envisaged to become more prominent. During 2016–2020, Russia was specifically highlighted as a country aiming for a superpower status with a willingness to use military force and challenge the EU security system (Kivimaa and Sivonen, Reference Kivimaa and Sivonen2021). This risk materialized in 2022 when Russia began a war in Ukraine.

Climate change has, of course, been depicted as one of the substantial landscape threats. Yet research has found that it has been ordinary citizens, rather than the Finnish energy elite, who have tended to perceive climate change as a bigger challenge. In 2016, circa 80 percent of both the energy elite and citizens perceived that energy imports from Russia should be reduced (Ruostetsaari, Reference Ruostetsaari2017); however, this did not effectively happen until 2022, following the European security and energy crisis.

Among the experts interviewed for this book during 2020–2021 there was a division between less and more concerned individuals, with the majority expressing both positives and security risks associated with energy trade between Finland and Russia. For example, in October 2020, an expert from the MEE noted that it was important to keep in mind that Finland had not had any political energy problems with Russia. They, however, also mentioned that a certain amount of caution is “in the genes” of civil servants. Also, a researcher at the time did not see Russia as a large problem in energy policy terms due to the replaceability of fossil fuels in the world markets, and saw geopolitical thinking as something rather narrow. Further, a politician stated:

Simultaneously, others – from academia, politics, public administration, and business alike – saw Russia as a hugely important landscape pressure in security terms on Finland’s energy sector. For instance, one interviewee questioned the feasibility of large strategic energy investments involving Russia as it is an unpredictable actor:

A politician stated in November 2020 that

A business actor highlighted how the 2014 events had changed perceptions about Russia:

The ways in which experts at the energy–security interface expressed their views and those of the wider Finnish society about Russia prior to 2022 demonstrated a kind of dissonance. In defence terms, it was acceptable to consider the geopolitical risk Russia posed, but, in energy terms, focus was on cooperation and trade alongside the economic benefits that Russia brought via inexpensive energy and increased employment for Finland. The few critical voices were effectively cast as extreme perceptions, especially in party political discussions.

The tendency to downplay the Russian landscape threat to Finnish policymaking was also visible in government strategy documents. For instance, the “Security Strategy” from 2017 stated:

Therefore, while there has been implicit deep-rooted caution in the Finnish worldviews, at the same time the official communication was focused on economic relations with Russia, with much less vocality about the geopolitical threats the country poses.

Since around 2010, Russia has become somewhat more distant to Finland while Finland has become closer to the EU. An interviewee described a generational shift in politics that sees Finland primarily as an EU member state that no longer thinks that Russian interests need to be considered first when making decisions. Some interviewed experts also demonstrated increasing awareness of China, the significant dependency on China in many sectors, and China’s future influence.

The exceptional events of 2022, when Russia began a war in Europe, had a clear influence on the perception and construction of landscape threats in government energy policymaking in Finland. Abandoning Russian energy was one heading in the new Finnish “Climate and Energy Strategy” from 2022, and this included references to the decisions by the Council of Europe to make Europe independent from Russian imports of gas, oil, and coal as soon as possible. This would have been unheard of prior to the war in Ukraine.

Unlike before, the expert perceptions were uniform post-2022. There was an expression of lost faith and trust in Russia and no change for the better expected in a long time. Some, however, perceived that also a look back is needed to reflect on past policies:

The clarity about Russia post-2022 has also led to more ambitious energy transition policies in Finland and a more open recognition of the geopolitical risks associated with different energy policy decisions. Next, I explore the interplay of energy policy with security and defence policies.

6.4 Policy Coherence and Interplay

The landscape perceptions about Russia and the dissonance between experiencing Russia as a security threat and a collaborative trade partner before 2022 explain much of the policy incoherence between energy (transition) and security policies that became evident in this study. I explored policy integration, synergies, and conflicts, as well as administrative interaction between the two policy domains by analyzing key energy and security policy strategies published during 2006–2020 and interviews conducted in 2020–2021 and 2022–2023. The results of these analyses have been published in journal articles (Kivimaa, Reference Kivimaa2022; Kivimaa and Sivonen, Reference Kivimaa and Sivonen2021) and I outline some of the key findings in this section.

The analysis of the Finnish government’s energy and security policy strategies showed moderate integration of energy issues into security and defence policy strategies, whereas the integration of security into energy policy strategies ranged from moderate to low. The low level of integration was observed especially in the concrete policy instruments that the policy documents outlined, and in the way the broader security considerations of the energy transition were not addressed (Kivimaa and Sivonen, Reference Kivimaa and Sivonen2021).

During 2006–2010, the reference objects at the energy–security nexus of the policy strategies were correlated with “vital functions” of the society that required securing electricity transmission, distribution, and power supply, alongside broader energy availability and supply. However, the referent objects were not only limited to the energy system. Security strategies also mentioned people’s health and well-being being affected by disruptions in energy supply and heating networks. In addition, the environment, business activities, and the defence system were recognized as important reference objects related to energy and security. The second period, 2011–2015, was less specific about reference objects. It mostly mentioned the critical energy infrastructure to be secured. Individual mentions of vital societal functions, the environment, and nuclear safety were made. There was no substantial change during the 2016–2020 period: Energy supply in terms of power and fuels was still emphasized as the object of security. There were selected remarks on nuclear safety, data systems, the environment, and the well-being of the population.

The general finding from the interview analysis was that several coordinating elements that have potentially advanced coherence between energy and security policies existed, although instruments or actors that considered both energy and security in equal measure were lacking. Examples of elements with potential to advance coherence included the “National Security Strategy,” taking a comprehensive security approach; the National Security Council, including energy representation; NESA; the public–private network Power Pool coordinated by NESA; and the National Defence Courses. However, neither the “Security Strategy” nor the National Defence Courses have typically addressed the energy sector or energy transitions in detail. The Power Pool system, in contrast, was perceived as very effective in securing the energy system in crises – perhaps proven during the 2022 European energy crisis (Kivimaa, Reference Kivimaa2022).

NESA, in turn, has received critique from the interviewees. For instance, it was claimed to retain “old world thinking” in terms of energy security. Also, elsewhere it has been described as a rather traditional organization, slow to follow contemporary trends and with its broader network comprising incumbent companies (Höysniemi, Reference Höysniemi2022). Yet NESA has also begun to orient toward the energy transition by publishing its “Energy 2030 Program” in 2019, which rethinks security of supply. In 2022, the Finnish government announced work to update NESA’s mandate to react to the requirements of the energy transition.

Commonly, the interviewees believed that interaction between the ministries and agencies responsible for energy and security has not been sufficient. Prior to 2022, the pursuits for coherence mainly incurred informally, as knowledge exchange in energy- or security-connected meetings. Criticism was also directed toward a siloed and fragmented interface where nobody had general responsibility for the energy–security nexus. More recent interviews have also highlighted the lack of high-level coordination within energy policy itself (see Section 6.1). The critique was partly connected to a political culture of not discussing geopolitical security with respect to energy policy, a “business-oriented” style in energy policy concerning Russia, and a lack of security expertise in the MEE department of energy.

A politician explained the observed incoherence in October 2020 as follows:

The historical-cultural legacy of “Finlandization” was also referred to by some as an explanation. The incoherence between energy and security policies implies that the security implications of the energy transition have not received appropriate foresight analyses. Yet, more recently for instance, the geopolitics of renewable energy has received increasing focus. Finland’s NATO membership may also increase collaboration at the energy–security nexus, as NATO is developing strategic awareness of this (Bocse, Reference Bocse2020).

The defence administration, and especially the Defence Forces, have provided rather good examples of energy policy integration – albeit on a very pragmatic level. The Defence Forces’ Climate and Energy Program has led to improvements in the energy efficiency of their operations but has also addressed climate adaptation to some degree. While little research has been conducted on alternative energy sources, there has been some follow-up activity on the technological development of this front. To better serve policy coherence, these activities need to be scaled up but are also dependent on how energy governance actors respond.

Perhaps the most visible example of synergies is realized in the context of emergency and crisis preparation of the energy sector. The above-mentioned networks, in the form of energy pools coordinated by NESA and associated practices, are likely to benefit security.

What became clear in the expert interviews was that the root cause of incoherence between energy and security governance was the lack of interest of most political parties, with explicit “hints” even given to civil servants not to explore this connection further (Kivimaa, Reference Kivimaa2022). This perhaps relates to the need that, if Russian-related risks had been better acknowledged in energy policy, Finland would have had to make some hard choices. In other words, improving the coherence between energy and security policies requires changing the objective setting and measures in one or both of the domains. The connection of the energy transition to national security was even less discussed. One business actor noted in 2020:

During the study period, from 2006 to 2023, two clear turning points were relevant for the interplay of energy and security policies. The first one was in 2014, with the Russian annexation of Crimea, which inspired some caution in energy policymaking. Yet, at the same time, it did not create a big enough landscape shock to fix any observed incoherencies between energy and security policies.

Nevertheless, relatively important policy decisions took place in 2014; for example, the publication of the “Energy and Climate Roadmap 2020,” a report by the Parliamentary Committee on Energy and Climate Change. Interestingly, the word “Russia” appears only once in this seventy-three-page report, despite Russia’s significant role as an energy importer to Finland during that time. Moreover, (energy) security was not used as a term, but security of supply and self-sufficiency were mentioned about twenty times each. Therefore, although there was focus on security it was only in somewhat narrow terms.

The 2014 “Energy and Climate Strategy” was followed by parliamentary approval of the decision in principle to grant permission to build Fennovoima’s Hanhikivi nuclear power plant – with one third ownership by the Russian state-owned nuclear power company Rosatom – in December 2014, ten months after Crimea. The decision in principle used security mainly in relation to radiation and nuclear security, not in geopolitical terms. Crimea was mentioned once in relation to the consultation statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that detailed, for instance, that the project would create negative publicity for Finland in Europe and is counter to EU aims to reduce energy dependence on Russia as a reaction to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea (Formin, 2016). Security of electricity supply was used as one of the key justifications for the parliamentary approval. An interviewee remarked that one explanation may be the historically rather good relations that Finland had with Russia as a supplier of raw materials; although this has also been a dependence by Finland that the Soviet Union and Russia have been able to exploit in negotiations. Parliamentary approval of this nuclear power development did not, however, mean that critical voices did not exist at the time:

In 2014, there was also rather extensive discussion about energy independence (aiming to produce all required energy in Finland) versus security of supply (making sure that there are sufficient energy imports available to complement domestic supply). The latter was accepted in policy due to much higher costs of energy independence and the market-oriented approach of the energy department. The broader aim has, nevertheless, been to reduce import dependency on Russia:

A more significant turning point occurred in 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine. The following higher energy prices and fear of energy shortages when Russian energy flows were lowered, if not completely stopped. In Finland, this created a large shift in energy policy and the political discourse:

It also led to some rather extraordinary policy decisions, although not constituting securitization as such. The energy imports from Russia were not directly halted for contractual reasons but the placement of sanctions by the EU, on the one hand, and the demands of the Russian government to pay Russian companies in Russian currency (rubles), on the other followed. The policy decisions deviating from regular energy policy made rather a long list, not all pertaining to security, but which, for instance, included alleviating the high electricity prices paid by consumers. One of the most exceptional policies brought into use, according to the interviewees, was the construction of an LNG terminal and acquiring an LNG ship from Texas to secure gas supply for the following winter: “On 20 May 2022, Gasgrid Finland Oy and Excelerate Energy, Inc., from the United States, signed a ten-year lease agreement for the floating LNG terminal vessel Exemplar” (MEE, 2022, p. 45). Another exceptional policy has been the clear strategic line taken to also discontinue Russian energy imports in the long term. The “Climate and Energy Strategy” from 2022 highlighted the importance of replacing gas as an industrial power source, the launch of an energy-saving campaign to respond to the sanctions and bans placed on Russian gas, and the establishment of an emergency stockpile of peat by NESA. It is clear that some short-term measures are counter to the zero-carbon energy transition, even though the discourse still emphasized the benefits of the transition to energy security.

In essence, the interviews conducted in 2022–2023 illustrated a significant shift in the interplay between energy and security policies in Finland:

Since early 2022, in energy policymaking there has also been more receptiveness to, or even a call for, security messages from the administration and the business sectors alike. In addition, a new security assessment of geopolitical risks was conducted on the Fennovoima Hanhikivi nuclear power plant. The explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines also brought into play the need to physically protect the critical energy infrastructure; something which was considered a much lower risk two years previously. While this does not amount to securitization as defined in Chapter 2, it can perhaps be described as a form of partial securitization of previously economic- and decarbonization-oriented energy policy.

6.5 Niche Development, Regime (De)stabilization, and Positive and Negative Security

In this section, I explore, via selected cases, the ways in which energy and security intertwine with niche development and regime destabilization (or the lack thereof). Niche development is principally addressed via the expansion of wind power, this being the most extensive new renewable energy source in Finland with the greatest potential. It is also directly connected to national security via tall wind turbines interfering with air surveillance radars and, less directly, via new dependencies on critical materials. While there are other emerging technologies, such as green hydrogen, they are in such an early stage of development that assessing security based on my data sources was not possible. The other cases relate to the stability of the established energy regime. They involve, first, the case of peat and its perceived importance for Finnish energy security, with security arguments playing a role in slowing down the energy transition; and, second, the lack of any security discussion by the Finnish government around the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. These cases essentially represent the path dependencies of Finnish energy policy (peat) and the history of “Finlandization” (Nord Stream 2).

Overall, the reconfiguration of the energy regime via electrification – which is neither directly niche development nor regime destabilization – has improved security in Finland. One politician noted, in 2020, that the Nordic electricity market has substantially improved the security political situation in Finland by reducing dependence on Russian energy sources compared to 2006, and that investments in cross-country electricity lines to Sweden and Estonia have also played a role. Generally, the expansion of electrification in Finland (and Estonia) can be seen as a transition that is perhaps more about reconfiguration than niche development. However, this is increasingly intertwined with the niche expansion and mainstreaming of wind power as well as continued support for established nuclear power. Both electrification and the larger share of wind power in electricity production have changed the key logic of the Finnish energy regime to become more responsive to energy availability at any given time (with development in demand and consumption response) and have reduced the role of stockpiling. The objectives behind these developments not only relate to decarbonization but also to visions of Finland as a net-electricity exporter and as attractive to new industries.

6.6 Concluding Remarks

Before 2022, there was an explicit and perhaps politically intentional disconnection between energy policy and geopolitical security. This has also been noted by others (Jääskeläinen et al., Reference Jääskeläinen, Höysniemi, Syri and Tynkkynen2018). The strong economic interests of Finland for cheap energy imports for industry and of the Finnish energy company Fortum – together with the history of Finlandization, that is, maintaining friendly terms with the Russian government – prevented a genuine assessment and discussion of the geopolitical risks related to energy trade with Russia. Interestingly, Finland was able to maintain a strong defence policy at the same time, which has also kept many areas of eastern Finland, close to the Russian border, inaccessible for wind power expansion. All in all, Russia has been a major landscape influence on the Finnish energy transition – somewhat slowing it down. This effect has occurred via the aim to achieve inexpensive energy for the export industry – where Russian imports have often been low priced – while, simultaneously, decarbonization of the electricity sector has been rather strongly pursued, creating policy incoherence.

Some energy system aspects, such as peat and nuclear power, have been subject to relatively intensive political debates. Yet, at the same time, a goal to depoliticize those parts of the energy system that were linked to Russian trade has existed. Examples of this include the general reluctance to discuss geopolitical security – while economic perspectives on security of supply existed – the depoliticization of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline debate, and the aim to depoliticize nuclear power. High trust by citizens in expert-based policymaking has supported the depoliticization of some energy questions. Figure 6.5 summarizes the key energy security issues in Finland and their effects on the energy transition.

Figure 6.5

Key energy security aspects and their transition impacts in Finland.

Source: Kivimaa, Finnish Environment Institute, 2023.

The events of 2022 led to a substantial shift in perceptions of Russia with regard to the energy system context, the politicization of energy policy, and some exceptional energy policy changes. Time will show whether this will also be influential in changing the energy governance system and how. How will energy and geopolitical security be addressed by the next governments and will that result in a less fragmented energy-governance system? How will the negative and positive security implications of energy transitions be anticipated and reacted to? The experimental governance features emphasized by sustainability transitions studies and studied and tested in other Finnish contexts have been rare in the rather “old world” energy administration of Finland but could be of use here (Kivimaa and Rogge, Reference Kivimaa and Rogge2022). Certainly, issues linked to electrification and the expansion of wind power necessitate much governance experimentation and innovation to deal with the defence radar issue as well as the sustainable extraction and supply of critical materials.

The Northern European country Norway has a population of 5.5 million and is among the wealthiest countries in the world. Norway was part of Denmark until the nineteenth century and gained independence from Sweden in 1905. The country is one of the founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and, while it chose not to join the EU, it is required to follow some EU legislation and has access to the EU internal market via the European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement, signed in 1992. Norway is located on the western side of Sweden and has limited borders with Russia and Finland to the north. On the northern, southern, and western sides, Norway is surrounded by the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Sea, and the North Sea. Its coastline is over 2,000 kilometers. The continental shelf governed by Norway is four times the size of the mainland and one third of the whole European continental shelf. Therefore, Norway has substantial access to offshore oil and gas reserves located on its continental shelf. It has also deliberated opening an enormous area for deep sea mining of critical minerals (Alberts, Reference Alberts2023).

Norway is a unique country case as it holds such a large magnitude of different kinds of energy reserves: oil, natural gas, and hydropower. These reserves have made Norway fully energy independent in terms of domestic energy consumption, apart from some dry years when it imported electricity to compensate for the lack of hydropower (Figure 7.1). Norway exports about nine tenths of its energy production (Figure 7.2). The country generated 3 percent of global gas (being the seventh-largest producer) and 2.3 percent of global oil production in 2020; the International Energy Agency (IEA) has described Norway as having a politically and economically “stabilizing role in the world’s oil and gas supply” (IEA, 2022, p. 9), which is otherwise concentrated in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the US. The income generated from the export of oil and gas has created substantial societal gains for Norway, but has also meant the country is economically dependent on this income. Despite increasing climate concerns and risks associated with oil and gas production the governance structures of Norwegian hydrocarbon production remained unchanged during 2013–2018 (Bang and Lahn, Reference Bang and Lahn2020).

Figure 7.1

Norway’s electricity imports and exports, 2006–2022, GWh.

Source: Statistics Norway (2023a).

Figure 7.2

Norway’s export of oil and gas, 2006–2022, in millions of tons oil equivalent.

Source: Statistics Norway (2023a).

Besides hydrocarbons, Norway has ample waterfalls that have, over several decades, led to the development of a sizeable hydropower sector that covers nine tenths of Norway’s total electricity production. Therefore, as Norwegian society is highly electrified and decarbonized, other renewable energy sources have been rather poorly supported politically. Instead, the oil and gas sector were supported by, for example, new concession rounds for exploration during 2015–2017 (Mäkitie et al., Reference Mäkitie, Normann, Thune and Sraml Gonzalez2019). Unlike the other case countries in this book, for Norway, the renewables niche expansion via wind power has often been perceived to mean rising levels of exports and power exchange to other countries without improved security of supply (Hansen and Moe, Reference Hansen and Moe2022). Wind power can, however, play an important role for local security of supply in areas where connections to the transmission network are weak (Skjølsvold et al., Reference Skjølsvold, Ryghaug and Throndsen2020). Whereas wind power was perceived positively in the early 2010s (Karlstrøm and Ryghaug, Reference Karlstrøm and Ryghaug2014), subsequently it faced increasing citizen resistance for various reasons, including the dispossession of Sámi areas (Normann, Reference Normann2021) and the rise of resource nationalist arguments (Hansen and Moe, Reference Hansen and Moe2022). It is only since the 2020s that increased policy support has been given to wind power to accelerate its expansion (see details in Section 7.5).

The abundance of fossil energy has led to a kind of dissonance between Norway’s export-oriented fossil fuels policy and its domestic zero-carbon energy policy, which are dealt with administratively in different domains and ministries, perhaps to reflect the different values involved. The fossil fuel sector represents economic security for Norwegians, while zero-carbon energy reflects the country’s environmental values. Therefore, to limit the emissions of the fossil fuel sector, Norway has developed its hydrocarbon production to be the world’s least carbon-intensive and has invested heavily in the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS). Nevertheless, this dissonance has meant that energy security concerns played a substantially smaller role in Norway prior to 2022 than in the other case countries.

The war instigated by Russia in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis in Europe have affected Norway differently than other European countries, due to the country’s large energy reserves. The events nevertheless caused changes in Norwegian energy policy too. The impact was twofold. First, Norwegians experienced much higher electricity prices than before due to interconnections with other European countries (Germany, Finland, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands), although the government compensated consumers for this rise to a large extent. Second, the Norwegian government was able to benefit from record high exports of oil and gas, replacing the quantities previously supplied by Russia to Europe and receiving thanks from the EU President Ursula von der Leyen, for being a valuable source of help in the European energy crisis (von der Leyen, Reference von der Leyen2023). This surplus in income accrued to the whole of Norwegian society because of large state ownership in the fossil fuel sector and a specific fund that saves and reinvests these profits for the benefit of the country and its future generations. Effectively, the way in which the Norwegian fossil fuel sector is governed represents thinking associated with positive security. The approach in which social benefits come from the fossil fuel funds has enabled, for a long time, the creation of high living standards and an economically and socially stable society. It has, however, also created an economic problem related to the potential future phaseout of fossil fuel production, on which no decisions have been made.

The few security concerns regarding the energy system in Norway, prior to 2022, focused mainly on the safety of hydropower installations (see Section 7.5). An area of focus in Norway concerning oil and gas has been control over the Svalbard area where many hydrocarbon resources have been of interest to both Norway and Russia. Additionally, the northern Finnmark region has a border with Russia and, hence, is important for the country’s territorial defence.

As with previous country chapters, this chapter describes the key context, that is, the energy and security regimes in Norway. It then continues with the analytical sections, drawing on Chapter 4, namely the perceptions of Russia as a landscape pressure for the energy sector; policy coherence and interplay between energy and security regimes including the level of securitization; and, finally, positive and negative security related to potential niche development and regime (de)stabilization. The analyzed material covers Norway’s energy- and security-related government strategies published since 2006 and two rounds of interviews with energy and security experts, first between November 2020 and March 2021 and then again between November 2022 and March 2023. The chapter draws from these materials and related literature and selected policy reports.

7.1 Energy Regime

As noted, Norway has a high share of renewable energy in its total energy consumption and its electricity sector is practically fully decarbonized. In 2022, 88 percent of Norway’s electricity consumption was produced with hydropower (reduced circa 10 percent from previous year due to dryer conditions) and 10 percent from wind power (an approximately 25 percent increase from 2021) (Statistics Norway, 2023b). Contrary to an earlier slow development of wind power, particularly due to bottlenecks in the concession process (Blindheim, Reference Blindheim2013), wind power production doubled between 2019 and 2020, increasing threefold by 2022. Despite Norway already being a leading country in the electrification of its society, there are new demands for further electrification, for instance, from the industry and petroleum sectors, data centers, green hydrogen production, and transport (IEA, 2022). This is likely to affect electricity prices and creates a need to expand wind power capacity.

If one looks at total energy production instead of domestic consumption, a different picture emerges. Oil and gas, with an even share, constitute nine tenths of energy production and the remainder is largely hydropower. There are no explicit and immediate plans to phase out oil or gas production. This is due to the economic security these provide for Norway, but also to broader European energy security and arguments that Norwegian oil and gas are produced in a more environmentally friendly way than elsewhere. Still, uncertainty exists regarding future demand for fossil fuels from other countries, even though the events of 2022 stabilized Norway’s role as an oil and gas provider for Europe in the short term and resulted in plans to expand current production fields. In addition, future energy regime development in Norway is described in terms of visions for both blue hydrogen (fossil fuels) and green hydrogen (from renewable electricity generation).

The largest fossil fuel producer in Norway is Equinor. In 2022, it produced over two million barrels of oil equivalent per day and circa 1,650 gigawatt hours of renewable energy (Equinor, 2023). When energy transition began gaining ground, in 2018, Equinor changed its name from previous Statoil and began new renewable energy projects. The state owns 67 percent of Equinor, and it is operated by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Fisheries. Other oil and gas producers are less than half of the size of Equinor. The largest of these include Esso Norge (part of Exxon Mobil) and Total E&P Norge.

The largest electricity-sector companies include Norsk Hydro, Statkraft AS, and Statkraft Energi AS. The Norwegian state owns 34 percent of Norsk Hydro; with the rest of company owned by private investors. Statkraft AS has multiple subsidiaries, all fully owned by the Norwegian state. It was described by an interviewee as Europe’s largest renewable energy company. Also, municipal ownership of hydropower is significant. Contrary to hydropower, most wind power is foreign-owned. Statnett, the transmission network operator, was established in 1990 when the electricity market was liberalized. In contrast to companies in the other countries described in this book, Statnett is fully owned by the Norwegian state, more specifically by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.

Norway’s large public-sector ownership of energy companies is nowadays quite a unique feature and enables tight collaboration between key energy-sector companies and the government. In the administrative side, there are several ministries that can be regarded as key actors pertaining to energy and security. The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy deals with the exporting oil and gas sector, while the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Fisheries is the majority shareholder in Equinor and Statkraft SF. The former has overall responsibility for energy and water resources. The Ministry of Climate and Environment is relevant from the perspective of the climate and the environmental effects of the energy sector. A few experts interviewed described the Ministry of Climate and Environment as weak compared to the energy ministry, which was seen as very strong:

The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) operates under the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. It is responsible for the management of energy resources and is the regulatory authority regarding the electricity sector. Interestingly, some experts described the NVE as almost as a ministry itself and pointed out that oil and gas exports are in practice separated from electricity production. Such an arrangement can be seen as, on the one hand, advancing the zero-carbon transition of the electricity sector and, on the other hand, as maintaining the oil and gas export sector:

ENOVA SF is a state-owned enterprise that is tasked with the advancement of more environmentally sound energy-sector development and supervised by the Ministry of Climate and the Environment. It does this by managing the Climate and Energy Fund, which aims to realize projects advancing Norway’s climate commitments.

Norway is not an EU member state but is still bound by many EU policies: It participates in the internal energy market as part of the EEA Agreement as well as in EU climate legislation for the period 2021–2030 (IEA, 2022). The EU is also Norway’s largest energy export market. An interviewee, however, remarked that Norway lacks similar holistic climate and energy policy preparation processes to many EU member states. Indeed, compared to many EU countries, renewable energy beyond hydropower has received little policy support in Norway. Renewable energy support was first highly politicized, but from 2010 its status as a salient political issue reduced: “Norway was producing more electricity than it needed domestically; electricity prices dropped, and the electricity utilities changed their position towards the certificate scheme” (Boasson, Reference Boasson, Boasson, Leiren and Wettestad2021, p. 205).

Norway aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030 and by 90–95 percent (from 1990 levels) by 2050. It also has a goal for carbon neutrality by 2030 via domestic reductions, the EU emission trading system, and international cooperation on emission reductions (IEA, 2022). The IEA assesses that Norway has already gone down the easiest routes, such as electrification of many parts of the society, so further greenhouse gas reductions will be more difficult to achieve (IEA, 2022). The Climate Change Act was enforced in 2017 to make the emission targets legally binding. In addition, the 2050 Climate Committee was established to conduct an overall review of Norway’s choices with regard to achieving its 2050 climate target.

In 2021, the Norwegian government published a White Paper “Putting Energy to Work,” which aimed to continue fossil fuel exploration indefinitely. It, however, also described a strategy to repurpose the skills and assets of the Norwegian oil and gas industry toward the development of new industries and technologies, largely offshore wind and green hydrogen but also CCS and blue hydrogen. Therefore, it seems that Norway is on board with the renewables niche expansion but, due to high economic security, it cannot endorse the decline of the fossil fuel export regime. Following the 2022 events, the Norwegian government issued a supplementary White Paper. The updated White Paper stated more strongly than before that policy for the further development, not discontinuation, of the petroleum industry needs to be put in place.

Indeed, since 2022, according to the interviewed experts, Norwegian energy policy has changed substantially. One significant difference is the strengthening of Norway’s role as a stable and credible energy provider to Europe. In 2022, Norway supplied 8 percent of Europe’s oil consumption and it continues to play an important role producing oil and gas for Europe. Existing oil and gas production areas were opened for further exploration. At the same time, wind energy is of interest too, and new areas were opened for offshore wind development. However, an interviewee expressed a concern that the oil and gas sector, as a higher salary-paying sector, will attract the majority of the skilled workforce, with less workers available for the offshore wind sector. This has proved to be the case before too (Mäkitie et al., Reference Mäkitie, Normann, Thune and Sraml Gonzalez2019).

The new plan for wind power expansion could be seen as a break from previous political practice (Kuzemko et al., Reference Kuzemko, Blondeel, Dupont and Brisbois2022). One of the latest developments includes building the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm (Hywind Tampen), based on Equinor’s floating wind technology, with a total installed capacity of 88 megawatts (IEA, 2022, p. 12). Equinor has also invested in wind power production outside Norway. One of the bottlenecks in Norway is the status of transmission and distribution networks. An interviewee argued that the grid is ruled by institutions that were set up following energy market deregulation in the 1990s and geared toward curbing grid investments. Nevertheless, Norway’s industrial policy is pushing for a new direction that focuses on access to renewable energy, battery production, hydrogen production, and new energy infrastructure for shipping:

Norway has the lowest-emitting oil production facilities globally. It heavily invests in CCS to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuel production, driven by the carbon tax introduced in 1991, with Equinor implementing several CCS projects (IEA, 2022).

In February 2022, the Norwegian government appointed an Energy Commission to assess future challenges in Norwegian energy policy up to 2030. In the resulting report in spring 2023, the commission called for a change of pace and the establishment of new green industries. If power production is not increased, the commission warned, there is risk of an energy deficit – potentially as early as 2027. Figure 7.3 summarizes the key aspects of Norway’s energy policy.

Figure 7.3

Key aspects of Norwegian energy policy.

7.2 Security Regime

Norway applies a total defence concept in its defence policy. Total defence has been described as integrated military and civil preparations supported by institutionalized cooperation between ministries, civic organizations, the private sector, and the general public (Wither, Reference Wither2020). The Directorate for Civil Preparedness heads up the Total Defence Working Group and coordinates exercises. A key aspect of Norway’s defence policy has been its membership of NATO. Norway was one of the founding members in 1949. Also, akin to Finland and Estonia, Norway now considers Russia to be the main threat to its national security. Before 2022, Norway (as well as Finland) collaborated with Russia on many economic, environmental, and border security questions (Wither, Reference Wither2020).

Norway also collaborates with the EU on defence and security. This collaboration has been described as ad hoc and based on informal arrangements (Hillion, Reference Hillion2019). In terms of formalized collaboration, Norway has relatively little influence on EU defence and security policy, although it indirectly plays a role as a NATO member country and as an Arctic state. In relation to security and foreign policy, Norway emphasizes the importance of international collaboration, NATO membership, and multilateral systems guided by the UN (Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2019).

The relevant ministries include the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An interviewee reported some rivalry between the ministries of defence and of foreign affairs. This was prior to 2022 and pertained especially to their orientation toward Russia – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs being more open to collaboration. In the Norwegian parliament, Storting, the Committee on Defence and Foreign Affairs deals with security issues.

Norwegian defence spending gradually reduced by half from the 1960s to 2000. It was at its lowest in 2008, 2012, and 2013, representing 1.4 percent of the GDP. In 2021, 1.8 percent of GDP was used for defence, which corresponds to the lowest percentage of this book’s case countries, but, given Norway’s substantial wealth, in monetary terms this was not the lowest amount.

The national security legislation was revised in 2019. The national defence plan is renewed every four years, and it includes a section on energy security. There is some overlap via organizational roles: Besides its energy policy roles, the NVE (see Section 7.2) develops guidelines for cybersecurity in the energy sector and conducts inspections. A previous analysis of Norwegian security and defence policy documents showed that policies have highlighted the Norwegian responsibility to govern the sensitive and important Arctic areas, while globalization was expected to increase cybercrime and terrorist attacks (Sivonen and Kivimaa, Reference Sivonen and Kivimaa2023). Figure 7.4 shows the key aspects of this sector.

Figure 7.4

Key aspects of Norway’s security and defence policy.

7.3 Perceptions of Russia as a Landscape Pressure at the Intersection of Energy and Security

Norwegian policy documents relate principally to the importance of international collaboration and trade. For example, developments such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the proliferation of nuclear materials, world population growth, increasing resource demand, and climate change are seen as important landscape developments affecting the energy sector (Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2019).

In terms of Russia as a particular landscape pressure, Norway has not been dependent on its oil and gas, unlike Estonia and Finland. Otherwise, the perceptions and expectations in Norway prior to 2022 presented a similar dual approach to Finland, both in policy documents and interviews. Before 2022, about a half of the interviewed experts either did not really consider Russia with regard to the energy–security nexus or perceived relations with Russia to be neutral or good. Of the remainder, one quarter presented mixed perceptions of Russia as a landscape pressure. For instance, the geopolitical threat and increasing military activity of Russia was mentioned but, at the same time, no threat toward energy installations or collaboration in environmental issues was perceived.

Only three interviewees perceived potential Russian developments as a risk. Two mentioned Russia’s increased assertiveness. In addition, risks were perceived in relation to the potential environmental implications of oil and gas transport and nuclear power. Further, three interviewees reported the 2014 invasion of Crimea as a major shift in Norwegians’ perceptions of Russia.

Although Norway’s connections with Russia have been quite different from Finland’s, that is, Russia is not an energy importer to Norway but rather shares interests in the Arctic Sea, nevertheless, perceptions of Russia were similar and there was an emphasis on collaborative relations. As in other case countries, 2022 gave rise to a major landscape shock, resulting in more uniform views about Russia in the energy–security nexus.

Next, the chapter moves onto discussing policy coherence and interplay at the energy–security nexus.

7.4 Policy Coherence and Interplay

As Norway is a special case of a country fully independent in energy and a major energy exporter, the ways in which security issues unfold in its energy transition differ substantially from that of Finland and Estonia. Norway is not dependent on the import of any energy source and, hence, energy security in Norway does not relate to security of supply but rather broader energy security: the operation of hydropower plants and the potential disruptions they may face, either from hybrid attacks or weather events. As noted in previous literature, the mainstream energy policy discourse “does not see renewables as connected to energy security, independence, or sovereignty” (Hansen and Moe, Reference Hansen and Moe2022, p. 4). In practice, however, this is not so straightforward. There are limitations in transmission capacity between different regions in Norway, which mean that availability and prices of electricity can alter substantially between regions. These issues with the grid infrastructure were not, however, presented as a security issue in Norwegian interviews.

During the expert interviews taking place in 2020 and 2021, security was seldom mentioned as connected to energy in general or energy transitions more specifically. This was due mostly to the energy independence of Norway; the security of the energy infrastructure alone was identified to be potentially at risk (of terrorist attack), yet most regarded this as unlikely. Some references to energy security were made, as potential electricity shortages in dry years would affect hydropower. In addition, cybersecurity was identified as an issue for the energy sector.

Likewise, in the first round of expert interviews, there was little consideration of how energy and security issues cohere with each other in public policymaking. There appeared to be “no committees, working groups or agencies advancing coherence between zero-carbon energy and security” (Kivimaa, Reference Kivimaa2022, p. 8). However, there were features that connect to the energy–security interface. For instance, emergency preparedness procedures and guidelines for cybersecurity by the NVE have been created in this interface. The NVE also heads up the Power Supply Preparedness Organization. Similarly to Finland, this organization, responsible for national emergency strategy, comprises representatives from different ministries, including those in charge of energy and of foreign affairs (IEA, 2022). The Petroleum Safety Authority has responsibilities regarding the security of petroleum production. Nonetheless, the overall interpretation of expert interviews was that, prior to 2022, energy and security policies were not coordinated between the four administrative organizations involved: three ministries and the NVE.

In principle, fossil energy has been depoliticized in connection to the importance of this sector for the Norwegian economy. This has also impacted how its coordination – or lack of it – was pursued in foreign and security policy (Kivimaa, Reference Kivimaa2022). On the domestic side, the security of hydropower installations has attracted attention, especially since a cyberattack on a Norwegian hydropower company in 2019 (see Section 7.5.2). In 2023, Storm Hans showed how extreme weather events resulting from climate change can also be a threat to energy infrastructure. Increase in the water level of the Glåma River destroyed a dam and inundated a hydroelectric power plant (Patel, Reference Patel2023).

There have also been differing views, such as the NVE having close connections to military forces and trials around total defence, and the energy ministry having a subsection conducting security analyses. Moreover, informal interactions via a small elite in a small country were mentioned as justification for the lack of more formalized processes – akin to Estonia. In 2018, the Council for Fuel Preparedness was formally established to increase cross-governmental cooperation on fuel security (IEA, 2022). Nevertheless, synergies between energy transition policy and security policy were not recognized, whereas the fossil fuel sector was identified as a positive factor for Norway’s economic and geopolitical security (Kivimaa, Reference Kivimaa2022).

Since 2022, more coordination has occurred, although an energy business actor noted that actors outside ministries have little awareness of whether and what kind of interaction takes place:

Among the interviewees for this book, energy business actors appeared to have a broader awareness of security connections than civil servants. Since 2022, the security of electricity supply – or at least the affordable price of it – became a key part of political discussions. This was the result of new electricity export interconnections from Norway to other countries in 2021 and an overall reduction in energy supply from Russia to Europe in 2022. The updated energy policy from spring 2022 was much more explicit about security than previous strategies. It was entitled “Energy Policy for Employment, Transition and Security in Times of Uncertainty” and emphasized Norway’s continued and stable oil and gas production. Given previous obstacles to develop wind power further, the measures to speed up wind power development can, to a certain degree, be seen as exceptional measures (cf. Heinrich and Szulecki, Reference Heinrich and Szulecki2018). Future developments will show whether the coherence between energy and security policies will improve.

7.5 Niche Development, Regime Stabilization, and Positive and Negative Security

Given the fact Norwegian society is highly electrified and hydropower has been a long-established energy source, interest in new niche development in renewables has been lower in Norway than in the other case countries. However, alongside solar power and energy storage, offshore wind power began to attract more attention since 2022. Nonetheless, it could perhaps still be regarded a socio-technical niche in Norway.

For the same reason, and due to the hydrocarbon export sector being so important for the Norwegian economy (Andersen and Guldbrandsen, Reference Andersen and Gulbrandsen2020), there has been very little talk of regime destabilization among politicians and energy businesses. The petroleum sector pursues decarbonization and not phaseout (Afewerki and Karlsen, Reference Afewerki and Karlsen2022). There is some resistance to further plans for exploration by residents and fishers in certain areas (Korsnes et al., Reference Korsnes, Loewen, Dale, Steen and Skjølsvold2023). The latest policy from 2022 talks about the continuation and further development of the oil and gas sector – albeit a connected development is that of CCS. The latest IEA energy policy review of Norway also brought forward the question of critical materials and Norway’s plan to begin producing them (IEA, 2022). Interestingly, this topic did not come up in the expert interviews in either phase. Therefore, the security issues discussed in this section are associated with stabilizing the existing regime and its security connections.

This section starts with the most dominant issue, that is, the economic and geopolitical security of Norwegian fossil fuel supply, which also serves as grounds to keep stabilizing this regime. Subsequently, the dominant electricity regime, namely hydropower and its security questions, are discussed. Finally, the section will end with the expanding wind power sector and the increasing importance of securing critical energy infrastructure.

7.6 Concluding Remarks

Norway presents as a very different country case study compared to Estonia and Finland in the previous chapters. In sustainability transition terms, one can say that regime stabilization of the oil and gas sector is taking place instead of regime destabilization. Wind power niche expansion has been rather modest and contentious, especially since 2019, although it has been gaining new traction since 2022. Moreover, energy security only appeared in the vocabulary after 2022.

The importance of the exporting hydrocarbon sector for the Norwegian economy can be framed both in terms of positive and negative security. There is much long-term positive security associated with oil and gas via the revenues generated, which have been used to improve the social security and living standards of Norwegian residents. This has enabled a sense of “freedom from insecurity” and community in Norway (cf. Booth, Reference Booth2007). In addition, there is negative security associated with possible future regime decline, whereby Norway would lose the economic and geopolitical security its fossil fuel reserves offer. The petroleum sector export and revenue have given Norway more geopolitical power and leverage than a country this size would otherwise have and losing this leverage might be seen as a kind of a security threat. Nevertheless, there is also implicit negative security associated with the continuation and further development of the fossil fuel regime. As the negative and disruptive impacts of climate change via adverse weather events and melting permafrost become increasingly evident, this sector – supplying circa 3 percent of world’s oil supply – contributes to increasing climate security risks in the future.

Expectations for future development are divided – or perhaps held together by dissonance – around the continuation of the fossil fuel regime and the partial switch of the electricity regime to wind power, although the latter has been much weaker than the former (see Figure 7.5). Explicit interconnections between energy transitions and security questions were missing before 2022 – this interface was exemplified mostly by incoherent policymaking and a lack of policy coordination mechanisms. There has been a marginal debate whereby some actors have associated negative security, via adverse sovereignty, with the sustainable energy transition (Hansen and Moe, Reference Hansen and Moe2022). This is linked to resistance to the transition, based on opposition to wind power and partly on higher electricity prices due to international electricity interconnections. This has seen aggressive use of language yet, so far, few physical security implications. Nevertheless, one could argue that the negative and polarized discourse reduces the overall positive security of Norwegian society.

Figure 7.5

Key energy security aspects and their transition impacts in Norway, 2006–2023.

Source: Kivimaa, Finnish Environment Institute, 2023.

Finally, a clear repoliticization of Norwegian energy policy took place in 2022, which also has dealt with these questions of energy sovereignty and energy security that have become part of Norway’s energy policy vocabulary. A strong degree of securitization is not evident, but there have been breaks from previous energy political practices – evidenced by new support for offshore wind power and visible military protection of critical energy infrastructure.

The last country case in this book deals with two dimensions. First, it looks at the UK as a whole and how its energy policy interacts with security and defence policy. Second, it zooms into Scotland as a somewhat comparable country to the other case countries in terms of population size (5.5 million inhabitants), its Nordic location, its pursuit of a zero-emission society, and its rather liberal values. As Scotland’s devolved powers do not include energy policy as such, nor security and defence policy, it mainly addresses energy questions via its powers over energy efficiency and land-use planning policies.

UK energy policy is an interesting mix of relatively strong support for fossil fuels coupled with ambitious long-term climate targets via the world’s first Climate Change Act, which came into force in 2008. The British coal industry has a long history and began destabilizing a hundred years ago. While coal mines began to close on an accelerated basis in the 1960s, coal sales to the electricity sector continued to expand until the 1980s. A “dash for gas” in the 1990s meant replacing coal as a source of heating fuel for buildings and was a start in reducing the carbon dioxide emissions of the energy sector. However, it was a specific policy instrument, the Carbon Price Floor, in 2013, that contributed to a rapid reduction in coal generation, from 39 percent in 2012 to only 2 percent in 2021 (DESNZ, 2023). The British coal phaseout, however, led merely to coal being replaced with natural gas for heating, which also has rather substantial greenhouse gas emissions. The development of the UK energy mix shows a considerable decline in coal use while the use of petroleum products and natural gas has remained relatively constant (Figure 8.1). In the overall energy mix, the share of renewable energy is rather modest. The extent of the gas network makes achieving heating reform by moving to nonfossil energy sources difficult. The electricity sector has, however, progressed with decarbonization, with 65 percent of electricity produced from renewable energy in Scotland and 38 percent in England and Wales.

Figure 8.1

Inland consumption of primary fuels and equivalents for energy use, million tons of oil equivalent.

Source: DESNZ (2023).

A kind of rejuvenation of “noncoal fossil fuel” policy happened in 2007, when hydraulic fracking for shale gas was added to the agendas of resource companies and the government alike. Some scholars argue that fracking represents a reproduction of the fossil fuel hegemony justified on the basis of issues such as employment and energy security (Nyberg et al., Reference Nyberg, Wright and Kirk2018). The different UK governments’ stances on hydraulic fracking of gas and oil have fluctuated from support to bans. In the end, fracking has never taken off properly and has ended for now. Overall, the past fifteen years or so have seen the contradictory parallel tracks of aiming to decarbonize and keeping hold of the fossil economy – somewhat similarly to the Norwegian case.

Scotland has been – and is – important for the UK energy and security sectors. Aberdeen (and the surrounding area) is the center of the British oil and gas industry. It has been described as a nexus of Europe’s fossil fuel industry and is the headquarters for many companies (Adams and Mueller-Hirth, Reference Adams and Mueller-Hirth2021). Further, England’s electricity demand exceeds its electricity generation, so it needs transfers of electricity from Scotland, Wales, and Continental Europe. Scotland produced 57 percent of the UK’s renewable electricity in 2021 (DESNZ, 2023). Scotland also has the lowest share of fossil fuel-based electricity generation in the UK and, while it is the hub of fossil fuel production, it uses little of the fossil fuel it produces (akin to Norway). In 2020, 97 percent of Scotland’s electricity generation was from renewable energy (Scottish Renewables, 2023). This means, in practice, a fully renewable energy-based power supply. Scotland’s wind power capacity in June 2022 was 13.3 gigawatts (GW) and, at that time, a further 16.7 GW of wind power was under construction or planned (Scottish Government, 2022).

One of the key future concerns for Scotland is the substantial decline of oil and gas production from the North Sea. In 2019, the oil and gas industry supported 57,000 direct and indirect high-value jobs and accounted for 9 percent of Scotland’s GDP. While the sustainable energy transition will create new jobs, the employment capabilities of the fossil fuel-exporting industry are hard to replace, creating potential socioeconomic insecurity for Scotland. Therefore, support for wind and hydrogen energy is argued to require significant early investment and policy support (Earnst & Young, 2023). The Scottish government wants the fastest possible just transition of the oil and gas sector, by investing, for example, in reskilling fossil fuel workers in the renewables industry and hydrogen sector (Scottish Government, 2023).

Scotland is also an important location with respect to the UK defence system. The country’s Faslane and Coulport naval bases are where UK military nuclear submarines are located. This is despite the opposition of many Scots, and especially the Scottish National Party (SNP), to the use of nuclear technology for energy and security purposes.

Finally, Scotland is an interesting case due to its attention on just transitions. The Just Transition Commission was established in 2018 as one of the first concrete just transition developments in the world.

This chapter differs from the other country chapters in that it examines both UK policies as a whole and then zooms into the specificities of Scotland, which has some devolved powers. The chapter describes the key context, that is, the energy and security regimes. It then continues with subsections, drawing on Chapter 4, namely the perceptions of Russia as a landscape pressure for energy transitions; policy coherence and interplay between energy and security regimes including the level of securitization; and, finally, positive and negative security related to niche development and regime (de)stabilization. The data used to inform the analysis comprises energy- and security-related government strategies published since 2006 and two rounds of interviews with energy and security experts, the first between November 2020 and April 2021, and the second in January 2023. The data analysis has been complemented by literature sources.

8.1 Energy Regime

8.1.2 Scotland

The Scottish government’s climate and energy policy is more ambitious than the UK government’s, but it does not have substantial policymaking power, with most resources at the UK government level (Lockwood, Reference Lockwood2021). The principal way in which the Scottish government can influence energy production and use are the land-planning policy and energy efficiency measures. In essence, “key aspects of energy policy are ‘executively devolved,’ including control over major energy consent and planning, and operational control over aspects of market support” (Cowell et al., Reference Cowell, Ellis, Sherry-Brennan, Strachan and Toke2017, p. 173). Yet the fast growth of renewable energy in Scotland, an almost 2.5-fold increase between 2012 and 2022 (Scottish Government, 2022), has increased the political negotiation power of the Scottish government with Westminster (Cowell et al., Reference Cowell, Ellis, Sherry-Brennan, Strachan and Toke2017).

As a former BEIS civil servant pointed out:

So, while energy policy broadly defined is a reserved power for the UK government, even across energy policy there’s a huge amount of consultation and engagement that happens between the Whitehall and Scottish government and various parts of Scottish sub-national government et cetera. These things are never really done genuinely in isolation.

Key themes in Scottish energy policy have been the promotion of renewable energy, the energy efficiency of households, and opposition to new nuclear power stations since about 2010. Increasing attention has been paid to energy poverty and energy justice (Santos Ayllón and Jenkins, Reference Santos Ayllón and Jenkins2023). Energy security has received relatively little attention and has mostly been perceived, prior to 2022, via a “markets will deliver” approach, as in the rest of the UK, with no specific Scottish policy on this. An energy expert argued in 2021 that too little attention was paid to the development of energy storage and smart grids as potential facilitators of energy security, with overreliance on the National Grid to deliver.

Scotland has its own Climate Change Act, issued in 2019, and has a net-zero target to reach by 2045. Some interviewees argued that the Scottish Climate Change Act has high targets but has inspired little concrete action. In late 2022, the CCC strongly criticized the lack of concrete plans and insufficient policy progress toward the Scottish climate targets and revealed substantial off-track developments in many areas (CCC, 2022a). Unlike the UK government, the Scottish government has opposed both nuclear power and the fracking of shale gas.

A draft “Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan” was issued by the Scottish government in early 2023. This plan aimed to more than double wind power production, with increased contributions from solar, hydro, and marine energy, and outlined the establishment of a new energy agency – Heat and Energy Efficiency Scotland – alongside emphasizing energy security much more than before (Scottish Government, 2023). Further, it noted that

The Scottish Government is clear that unlimited extraction of fossil fuels is not consistent with our climate obligations. It is also clear that unlimited extraction, even if the North Sea was not a declining resource …, is not the right solution to the energy price crisis that people across Scotland are facing or to meeting our energy security needs.

(Scottish Government, 2023, p. 97)

A small number of actors, including Scottish Power, dominate Scottish energy policymaking. An expert from a think tank argued in 2021 that the Scottish government is influenced by lobbyists representing large companies and it is headed by former industry representatives. This view was shared by an academic who also perceived that the Energy Saving Trust had a great deal of influence, although environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also played an important role in Scottish policymaking.

The dominance of economic and free market-based energy policy in the UK has been obvious. This originated at least as far back as the 1970s, with emphasis on economics, “rational choice,” and free market, but there have been some periods that were more regulation-orientated, especially during 2006–2008 when the Climate Change Act was enacted (Kivimaa and Martiskainen, Reference Kivimaa and Martiskainen2018). This contrasts with the somewhat more sociodemocratic approach of many Scots –which takes account of the natural environment and the welfare of the poor – even though some contrary views also exist.

My experience is simply: the UK is hard-core free market in its approach to energy. The Scottish government has no ideological approach to energy and has been content to let industry lead. The outcome is that the political perspective is purely about “public communications” – presenting Scotland as a “green powerhouse” or a “world leader in renewables.” There seems next to no interest politically in how that is actually developed.

(Think tank, 2021)

Nevertheless, Scotland was one of the first countries to form a just transitions body. The Just Transition Commission, set up by the Scottish government, was influenced by a coalition on just transition formed by NGOs and the Scottish Trade Union Congress and established to monitor and counsel on government climate policy according to just transition principles (Santos Ayllón and Jenkins, Reference Santos Ayllón and Jenkins2023). An interviewee noted, however, that it had little political or business influence. Figure 8.2 summarizes the key aspects of UK and Scottish energy policy.

Figure 8.2

Key aspects of UK and Scottish energy policy.

8.2 Security Regime

Britain is an island state so its defence and security policy are related to the control of waters and maintaining free movement of trade, but also to the centrality of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and close cooperation with the US and France (Dorfman, Reference Dorfman2017). The US has been the global hegemon with whom the UK has closely built its security and defence regime (see Regilme and Hartmann, Reference Regilme, Hartmann, Romaniuk, Thapa and Marton2019). Perhaps linking to the UK’s past global power and international security cooperation, the UK has military bases with a wide global reach. They are located in countries in different parts of the world, such as Canada, Belize, Kenya, and Iraq. The UK also wields soft power via extensive diplomatic efforts and relations globally, albeit with some loss of power after Brexit. These factors were apparent in expert interviews in terms of connections to climate and energy questions.

The first “National Security Strategy” was published in 2008 by the Cabinet Office. It was criticized for a lack of consultation with other departments and, hence, was revised as early as 2009, this time employing cross-government consultation (Dorfman, Reference Dorfman2017). The strategy was followed by the establishment of the National Security Council and the post of National Security Adviser in 2010. Since then, each parliament has been expected to produce a parliamentary defence and security review, titled, since 2019, “Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development, and Foreign Policy.” The integrated reviews produced by UK governments have increasingly crosscut several policy domains. The 2023 integrated review stated that: “[t]he most pressing national security and foreign policy priority in the short-to-medium term is to address the threat posed by Russia to European security” and emphasized increases in defence spending (HM Government, 2023, p. 11). It also emphasized broader, nonmilitary security aspects, connecting, for example, to the new Critical Minerals Strategy and the new Semiconductor Strategy. This illustrates the increased importance to secure the supply and promote the science-and-technology development of these materials and components, not only for energy but also for other digitalizing sectors.

Defence policy has as its objective to protect people, to stop conflicts, and to be prepared for potential battles (Ministry of Defence, 2019). Historically, delivering access to oil and gas and securing international supply chains has also been one of the tasks of the UK military sector. In addition, during the current millennium, climate change mitigation has become a part of UK defence policy (Depledge, Reference Depledge2023). British defence policy has also been interested in the Arctic region and the High North, despite the UK not being one of the Arctic states. This concern intertwines with climate change, because defence officials have been concerned about the implications of climate change on Arctic resources and trade routes becoming more available in response to sea-ice melting (Depledge et al., Reference Depledge, Kennedy-Pipe and Rogers2019). Figure 8.3 summarizes the key aspects of the UK security and defence policy.

Figure 8.3

Key aspects of UK security and defence policy.

Central public actors in security, defence, and international relations include the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the British Army, and the Foreign, Development and Commonwealth Office (FCDO). Scotland does not have devolved powers related to security and defence. Therefore, it is dependent on UK government agencies, not only for military defence, but also for cybersecurity (Neal, Reference Neal2017). The UK’s defence spending was 2.2 percent of GDP in 2021 (HM Government, 2021), having had a declining trend until 2022. The state possesses over 200 nuclear weapons, of which 120 are active, with 40 positioned at a time in four nuclear-powered submarines (Dorfman, Reference Dorfman2021). These are located in Faslane and Coulport naval bases in Scotland, although Scotland does not have any say regarding the location of the nuclear weapons. A recent decision was also made by the UK MoD to build twenty-six new military vessels for the Royal Navy in Glasgow.

It is obvious that the political ambitions and worldviews in Scotland differ from that of the broader UK regarding security, defence, and foreign policy:

The reports produced in connection to the 2014 referendum for Scottish independence emphasized a different approach to defence than that in the broader UK (Neal, Reference Neal2017). An independent Scotland led by the SNP would prefer to be a part of NATO while refusing to hold nuclear weapons or implement nuclear deterrence measures (Ritchie, Reference Ritchie2016). However, there are also those who see that Scotland would suffer from independence and, for instance, lose the defence dividend paid by the rest of the UK to Scotland (Fleming, Reference Fleming, Hepburn, Keating and McEwen2021). Therefore, it would be difficult to depict what the security and defence policy of Scotland would look like if it existed.

8.3 Perceptions of Russia as a Landscape Pressure at the Intersection of Energy and Security

The landscape pressures in energy and policy documents, at the energy–security nexus, were similar to those presented in other countries. For instance, during 2006–2010, globally increasing competition for energy, coupled with some states using energy as a “hostile policy tool,” was regarded as a security concern. Increased supply disruption risks were anticipated due to social unrest and corruption, while nuclear safety was also a specific landscape concern for Scotland. Russia was perceived as a landscape pressure via the Russia–EU gas dispute, and as applying energy as a political lever. New landscape pressures during 2010–2015 included Arctic developments, nuclear proliferation, and crowding of sea space with transport and offshore energy infrastructure. In 2015–2020, policy documents noted the pressures of climate change, pandemics, cyberattacks, and nuclear and chemical weapons (Kivimaa and Sivonen, Reference Kivimaa and Sivonen2021). There was very little discussion of Russia per se as a landscape pressure in the policy documents, even after the high media attention of 2006.

Nevertheless, Russia has been one of the countries of “landscape” concern for UK security and defence policies, as with the other case countries in this book. Due to the absence of a joint border, however, the perceptions of Russian pressure have, in this energy–security nexus, perhaps been less substantial. The changes in Russian energy policy from 2004 onward and the Russia–Ukraine gas dispute in 2006 “marked a reversal from the politically and ideologically significant processes of privatisation and liberalisation that Russia had initiated after the Cold War … they represented the polar opposite of the free markets that UK policy makers, and other institutions, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), had been so actively seeking to establish” (Kuzemko, Reference Kuzemko2014, p. 265).

Broadly, it seems that, prior to 2022, the influence of the “Russia risk” has been minimal on the UK and Scottish energy regimes. It was barely mentioned by the interviewed energy experts, compared to interviews concerning the other case countries. Some even expressed very relaxed attitudes to any concerns:

However, in hindsight, the latter person remarked two years later:

There were select interviewees, however, principally those from the defence and foreign policy sectors, who have always considered the Russian state to be an energy security risk in political decision-making processes. This aspect has been used to legitimize nuclear power by the UK government and renewable energy by the UK and Scottish governments. While, initially, the Scottish decision-makers may have been more concerned than UK decision-makers, their perception became a consensus in 2022:

For some people the indirect links between Russian and UK energy systems were visible, while, for most, the links only became visible via the energy crisis ensuing from the war:

What this tells us is that, first, geopolitical concerns over Russia have not been particularly important for the Scottish or wider UK energy policy, as the country is geographically remote. Nevertheless, the energy transition has received some legitimacy from the indirect dependency of the UK on Russian energy flows. More broadly, however, it also shows the high level of market orientation of UK energy policy, which has been more about economic developments than about different dimensions of security. The events of 2022, however, showed that developments concerning Russia also influence the energy sector substantially, in this case in terms of significant energy price increases.

8.4 Policy Coherence and Interplay

8.5 Niche Development, Regime Destabilization, and Positive and Negative Security

There is no niche development that substantially comes up in the security context in Scotland. As outlined, onshore wind power has become an established and significant part of the Scottish energy system. (In England and Wales, it has been “de facto” banned since 2015 due to unfavorable planning conditions.) The destabilization of the fossil energy regime is also rarely discussed in the context of positive and negative security. It has been seen to proceed as planned without major hiccups – albeit with significant implications on employment in Scotland and the need to reskill the workforce.

The offshore wind sector could perhaps be seen as a developing niche given its share is much less than that of onshore wind. Offshore wind began gaining increased support when BEIS launched the new industrial strategy at the end of 2017. A perspective arising from the expert interviews in 2020–2021 is that, with regard to the large offshore wind farms constructed on the east coast of Scotland, controversy has been raised over the substantial amount of prefabrication work conducted, for instance, in China, which has enabled lowered costs and increased scaling of renewable energy – but has increased supply dependencies on non-European actors. One reason for this supply chain dependence on Asia is due to the UK Contracts for Difference model, which looks at development costs and not the overall economic impacts of developments.Footnote ¹ This, in essence, is a somewhat of a security-of-supply risk, but elsewhere it has been noted that, broadly, the development of Scottish offshore wind power benefits UK energy security (Qu et al., Reference Qu, Hooper, Swales, Papathanasopoulou, Austen and Yan2021). The energy security argument has provided needed legitimacy for the expansion of the offshore wind sector (MacKinnon et al., Reference MacKinnon, Karlsen, Dawley, Steen, Afewerki and Kenzhegaliyeva2022).

Linked to the established energy regime, an ongoing concern for Scotland has been nuclear power. The Scottish government has taken a no new nuclear power policy stance, led by the SNP, from around 2006. This differs substantially from the rest of the UK’s favorable view of nuclear power. In policy strategy documents from 2006 to 2010, the Scottish government saw its no nuclear policy as “a principled priority where the risk of radiation or terrorist attacks is seen larger than energy gains” (Kivimaa and Sivonen, Reference Kivimaa and Sivonen2021). The general perception in Scotland has been that nuclear power stations and nuclear waste transport and disposal create security risks for society. However, the opposition of nuclear power generation is also linked to the military and its weapons, in essence to the positioning of the UK nuclear deterrent submarines in Scottish waters. Previous research has argued that UK energy policy has adopted a masking strategy that has incorporated nuclear submarine construction costs into civil nuclear programs, which thereby act as a hidden subsidy for military nuclear activities (Johnstone et al., Reference Johnstone, Stirling and Sovacool2017). One interviewed expert stated that, even in the 1950s, the first large-scale commercial civil nuclear power plant’s role was to produce plutonium for the nuclear weapons program. The Scottish government, the SNP, and civil society organizations oppose nuclear weapons, new construction of civil nuclear power, and nuclear research alike, yet these capabilities contribute substantially to the economy of some Scottish regions (Heffron and Nuttall, Reference Heffron, Nuttall, Wood and Baker2017; Ritchie, Reference Ritchie2016).

Besides this link between civil nuclear power and nuclear weapons, new security risks related to nuclear infrastructure are emerging due to climate change. The UK civil nuclear infrastructure is argued to be

This perspective supports the cautious Scottish approach toward nuclear power.

What is interesting is that the exceptional events of 2022 did not change the Scottish government’s opposition to nuclear power and perhaps even strengthened its no new nuclear policy, while the rest of the UK is even more strongly in favor of nuclear power. The former happened as a response to seeing the vulnerability of nuclear power infrastructure as a potential target of war. This differs quite dramatically from the perceptions of nuclear power in Finland, seen as a partial solution to reduce security risks related to energy imports (see Chapter 6). One potential explanation may be the substantial Scottish lead on the production of onshore wind power, while another links to the broader UK energy system that is able to balance nonwindy periods. Nevertheless, Scotland has much higher electricity prices than our other case countries and problems with socioeconomic security linked to energy poverty.

Fossil fuel phaseout in Scotland is coupled with renewables expansion. North Sea gas production is expected to be completely phased out by 2050. No serious national security risks are seen to relate to this development, while this could give rise to skills and employment-related risks:

Finally, relatively little has been done in terms of gas security since 2022, apart from reinstating the gas storage facility.

8.6 Concluding Remarks

The links between hydrocarbon energy, the energy transition, and security are rather complex and manifold in Scotland and the wider UK, with relatively fragmented governance in place. While some instances of policy integration between energy and security or defence policies were found, broader policy coherence regarding security and the zero-carbon energy transition appeared lacking (Figure 8.4). This links to the somewhat conflicting intertwining logics of energy and security regimes, which simultaneously support the old energy system while also aiming to change it. In addition, before 2022, many of the efforts that relate to coordination across energy and security regimes were focused on external or global energy questions – such as safeguarding fossil fuel trade routes or advancing energy diplomacy via renewables – instead of domestic energy policy. The events of 2022 seem to have raised questions of security and energy transition links in political and policy agendas pertaining to domestic energy production and use. Figure 8.4 summarizes the key aspects of the energy–security nexus in Scotland and the wider UK and their effects on the energy transition.

Figure 8.4

Key energy security aspects and their transition impacts in Scotland and the wider UK, 2006–2023.

Source: Kivimaa, Finnish Environment Institute, 2023.

Attention paid to broader security questions in energy policy was low, especially between 2016 and 2021, or was sometimes masked from the wider public, as in the case of civic and military nuclear power. Generally, the large influence of the private sector on energy policy and the dominance of economic and market-based values – essentially an active and deeply ingrained depoliticization of energy – have led to relatively little attention being paid to the connection between security and energy transitions prior to 2022. Some argue that insufficient attention was paid to the expansion of new niches, such as energy storage and smart grids, as means to improve energy security, and that there has been an overreliance on the privately owned National Grid in energy security. However, there is rising interest in these issues, in particular critical materials security.

At the level of objectives, in key policy documents some interconnections were made between energy and security in the early 2000s. These reduced in emphasis after the Conservative government came in power in 2015, alongside dilution of earlier ambitious low-carbon energy policies. In addition, a divergence has existed between a hydrocarbon-based security approach to safeguard international fossil fuel routes (which has been rather coherent) and the advancement of climate security via the energy transition. The former represents a kind of negative security-based thinking where physical attacks to fossil fuel flows were prevented (see Hoogensen Gjørv, 2012; Hoogensen Gjørv and Bilgic, Reference Hoogensen Gjørv and Bilgic2022), while the latter could benefit broader positive security thinking based on enabling communities via the energy transition to be prepared for climate change impacts. The latter could also connect better to the Scottish just transitions agenda. The economic focus of energy policy has had a negative influence on cross-departmental coordination of energy and broader security issues. Such collaboration is seen to be increasing but, at least before 2022, it has tended to be more organic and ad hoc than formalized.

Geopolitical concerns over Russia were not particularly important for Scottish or wider UK energy policy pre-2022, as the island is geographically remote from Russia. Even some of the energy experts understood the indirect interconnections only after the 2022 events. Yet the energy transition, and especially wind power niche expansion, was partly legitimized based on the need to reduce the indirect dependency of the UK on Russian energy flows. Nevertheless, prior to 2022, the discussion on security in UK energy policy was mostly limited to the kind of energy security that markets can deliver or “real-time” security-of-energy supply. While the political rhetoric of energy security became more visible after the 2022 events, little concrete changes in policy instruments were evident in early 2023. However, critical materials availability – linking to growing expectations of geopolitical risks and the need for new learning around the energy transition – is a new issue that brings energy transition and security closer together than before. In the UK, this has mainly been tackled by investments in innovation and domestic lithium production – that is, new niche development.

Scotland has had a different worldview on security in relation to energy transition than the broader UK. While in-depth explorations of these links have been lacking, more attention has been paid to the environmental and health security effects of energy policy choices and just transitions – the latter linking broadly to the conceptualization of positive security. These have been evident, for instance, in the rather long opposition of nuclear power, opposition to fracking, and more consideration of energy poverty and the just transition than in the rest of the UK.