“Energy security is now national security.” General Tom Middendorp on the risks and rewards of Europe’s defence strategy

General Tom Middendorp was the chief of defence of the Dutch armed forces from 2012 to 2017. His earlier career in the Royal Netherlands Army included commands in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is now the chair of the International Military Council on Climate and Security, an association of military leaders and security experts that assesses and anticipates the security risks posed by climate change.

Are we too used to energy security?
Yes. We are a bit spoilt. We come from a golden age of abundance. We’re now realising that we have entered a new era of disruption and that creates completely new dynamics.

In terms of the security of our electricity grids, where do you see the threats?
There are military dependencies on energy and military supply lines are the first targets in any crisis. For the military, it’s important to create energy self-sufficiency. But from a wider resilience perspective, we see in Ukraine that energy grids are on the front line. So it’s not just a technical issue any more. It’s also about how opponents can disrupt societies. And there’s also our dependency on gas- and oil-supplying countries that can use it against us.

Are there any lessons from Ukraine for other European countries?
They’re creating more decentralised energy hubs that are more self-sufficient. If you have local energy supply and production, these are much harder to target than a centralised system.

Are our grids generally better secured than they were five or 10 years ago?
Yes, in certain respects, especially when it comes to cybersecurity, where there’s a good level of resilience. But we are underestimating new hybrid threats – such as Russian tankers dragging their anchors along the seabed and pulling out cables.

The EU still spends more than €1bn a month on Russian oil and gas. Is it extricating itself from its energy dependencies quickly enough?
It needs to be much faster than we’re doing it today. We have to shift to alternative suppliers that are less of a threat and reduce our dependency on that supply by creating more energy independence through the entire energy-transition process. That’s also something that we need to speed up to create more autonomy within Europe and make ourselves less vulnerable.

So there’s a strong overlap between energy security and national security?
Absolutely. The energy transition can make defence forces more autonomous – we now depend on very long supply lines, which are very vulnerable. And it would also reduce the risk to our infrastructure. Creating more self-sufficiency on the local or city level through the energy transition will create more resilience.

That’s a big project.
It’s huge. It’s the complete turnaround of our current system from an imported-fuel and top-down system to a bottom-up, decentralised system – and also a more hybrid one. We now have separate top-down energy systems for gas, oil and electricity. With a bottom-up, hybrid system, you can exchange with each other. You can produce energy as electricity but you can turn it through electrolysis into hydrogen too, so you can make it more hybrid on a local level.

Is there an opportunity here to spend the 1.5 per cent of GDP that’s being mandated for critical infrastructure for Nato members as part of the 5 per cent that they’re supposed to be spending on defence by 2035?
Well, it’s meant to be spent on national resilience. There’s a good case to make here if you realise that energy security is part of that national resilience. They are now developing the criteria to judge whether or not something can be part of that 1.5 per cent because many people want to compete in that area.

Would you like to see some of that 1.5 per cent directed towards cleaner energy?
Yes. Clean energy helps defence to become more autonomous in its operations. There is that dual-use element to it. Defence can be a platform for innovation and the more it can accelerate the energy transition in the operational realm, the more it can be used in civil society. The technology is almost fully driven by civil innovation but integrating these technologies can be a military contribution to developing this new system.

How much enthusiasm for that role do you detect among militaries?
It’s still limited, to be honest. People worry that it will cost more and slow us down, that it’s not as effective as fossil fuels. There’s a lot of prejudice. Until now, energy transition has been a concern from a climate perspective – a solution to lower our carbon footprint. We need to realise that it’s about more than that. It’s also about our security. By approaching it from those two angles, we can accelerate. If we don’t make that transition, we’ll remain dependent on all kinds of suppliers. Of course, the energy transition could create new dependencies – we could become more dependent on critical minerals and components from China. So we need to innovate too.

Are there any useful examples of that?
There’s a company called Solarge producing solar panels that aren’t made from glass and don’t damage quickly. In tests, the panels were shot at but kept functioning. They’re very lightweight and at the end of their life all of the materials can be reused for new panels. That’s the kind of European innovation that could help to make us more independent. In the current system, we are buying Chinese solar panels that can’t be reused: we’re creating billions of panels that we’re turning into waste, including the rare earth minerals inside them that we cannot use again.

Should Europe be wary of replacing a dependence on Russian fossil fuels with a dependence on Chinese rare earths and technology?
It’s important to shape the energy transition in a way that doesn’t create new dependencies. It’s good that Europe is now realising that it needs to become more independent in terms of knowledge development and innovation, because we have outsourced a lot of that – production to China, innovation to the US. We need to reinvent ourselves in those areas.

As Europe focuses on its own security, is the bigger picture being missed? There has been a lot of cutting back on climate measures overseas. Is that a false economy?
Yes, increasingly climate change has effects at the strategic, geopolitical level. The melting Arctic opens up a completely new arena around resources and trade routes – and new possibilities for Russia to position naval and nuclear forces in the north. That’s a game changer for Nato and that’s just one example. But climate change acts as a risk multiplier, especially in the fragile regions around us. Last year I travelled through Somalia, Iraq and Bangladesh, and I saw the enormous impact that the changing climate is already having. Somalia has had only two rain seasons in five years. It used to be a certainty that it would have a rain season every year but that’s gone now, which means that a society that depends upon agriculture and livestock has been completely disrupted. Millions of people have to move and they go to the cities, where they can’t find work and so start making desperate choices that create instability, migration flows, breeding grounds for extremism. A changing climate has many spin-off effects on security. Militaries have to take this seriously and not see it as a distant future topic for other departments to care about.

Is climate change already having an effect on military operations?
Yes. For instance, at the US Navy’s largest base – Norfolk, Virginia – they have to leave the harbour several times a year because of flooding or flood risks. So they are now putting resilience measures in place to ensure that they can maintain operational effectiveness.

Are there any militaries setting an example when it comes to adaptation in terms of procurement and equipment?
In the UK, they’re integrating climate requirements into the whole acquisition process – for everything they buy, they have to check the box on climate. I see it being integrated in procurement processes but also in vital infrastructure. US military bases are installing smart grids to become more energy independent and create more local autonomy. So it’s not just about climate but also operational effectiveness and reducing vulnerability.

Could governments encourage their militaries to act more as laboratories for addressing climate change and the energy transition?
Yes, but maybe not approach it just from the climate angle because that might scare people away, especially in the military. If you approach it from both sides – how to use the energy transition to make your units more autonomous and reduce your carbon footprint – then it becomes more interesting because you put operational effectiveness up front and that makes it appealing for militaries to put their money and effort into it. Countries should indeed include it in their policymaking because, though these technologies come from the civil sector, the military can help by integrating them in a very local, autonomous system that’s also mobile. That is an added value that the military can offer, providing a kind of free experimentation space for civilian innovators in this new, more bottom-up system, realising that it all has a dual-use value.

What are the downsides if that opportunity isn’t embraced?
This is all long-term, complicated and expensive, which tends to put governments off. It’s like Albert Einstein allegedly said: if you do what you did, you get what you got. And what we did was create enormous dependencies. If you keep doing that and just look the other way, you only make yourself more vulnerable. So my greatest concern is that we lack the urgency to move, that we don’t see the full picture, that we see the energy transition as just a climate thing, competing with security. It’s not a competition. It’s a win-win.