Contemporary Trends in European Energy Security, Critical Infrastructure Protection, and Russia Energy Sanctions Enforcement

While ensuring security of supply remains the paramount energy policy priority to ensure a stable European energy market in Winter 2023-24, the Transatlantic community must continue to increase cooperation to advance measures across five key pillars vital for European energy security to counter Russia’s continued assault against the continent’s energy resiliency. These pillars include:

1. Development of energy diversification infrastructure
2. Development and implementation of energy regulatory and security policy frameworks
3. Cyber and physical security of energy infrastructure
4. Supporting Ukrainian critical energy infrastructure protections and NATO’s operational energy security goals
5. Countering Russian malign influence in the European energy sector and Ukraine, including through analysis and the development of methods that can aid energy sanctions regimes currently targeting the Kremlin

Given the significant academic, policy, and legal development of the first two of these pillars, which encapsulate the European Union’s long-term energy security strategies encapsulated in the “hardware” and “software” priorities defined under the European Energy Union framework, this research focuses on advancing analysis, research, and publication on two pressing areas of the remaining pillars of European energy security:  

1. Critical Energy Infrastructure Protection – Technical Methods and Policy Priorities for Ukraine and the Nordic-Baltic Region 
2. Development, Assessment, and Enforcement Methods for the Global Russia Energy Sanctions Regime 

Grant Result

Once a niche area of energy security policy, the physical protection of energy and critical infrastructure installations has become a national security requirement due to the growing trend of physical sabotage incidents worldwide. This digest, a companion to the Underwater Mayhem report, is part of a multi-year research project focused on improving monitoring and deterrence to counter the escalating count of subsea critical infrastructure sabotage attacks now ubiquitous around the globe.

Read the Digest

Benjamin Schmitt

Senior Fellow, Kleinman Center and SAS

Benjamin Schmitt is a joint senior fellow at the Kleinman Center and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Penn. He is also an affiliate of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and associate of the Harvard-Ukrainian Research Institute.

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