Sweden scraps plans for 13 offshore windfarms over Russia security fears

Decision comes after military concludes projects would complicate defending Nato’s newest member against attack

Sweden has vetoed plans for 13 offshore windfarms in the Baltic Sea, citing unacceptable security risks.

The country’s defence minister, Pål Jonson, said on Monday that the government had rejected plans for all but one of 14 windfarms planned along the east coast.

The decision comes after the Swedish armed forces concluded last week that the projects would make it more difficult to defend Nato’s newest member.

“The government believes that it would lead to unacceptable consequences for Sweden’s defence to build the current projects in the Baltic Sea area,” Jonson said at a press conference.

The proposed windfarms would have been located between Åland, the autonomous Finnish region between Sweden and Finland, and the Sound, the strait between southern Sweden and Denmark. The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad is only about 310 miles (500km) from Stockholm.

Wind power could affect Sweden’s defence capabilities across sensors and radars and make it harder to detect submarines and possible attacks from the air if war broke out, Jonson said.

The only project to receive the green light to was Poseidon, which will include as many as 81 wind turbines to produce 5.5 terawatt hours a year off Stenungsund on Sweden’s west coast.

“Both ballistic robots and also cruise robots are a big problem if you have offshore wind power,” Jonson said. “If you have a strong signal detection capability and a radar system that is important, we use the Patriot system for example, there would be negative consequences if there were offshore wind power in the way of the sensors.”

A Nato maritime commander said earlier this year that the security of nearly a billion people across Europe and North America was under threat from Russian attempts to target the extensive vulnerabilities of underwater infrastructure, including windfarms, which he said had “system vulnerabilities”.

V Adm Didier Maleterre, the deputy commander of Nato’s allied maritime command (Marcom), told the Guardian in April: “We know the Russians have developed a lot of hybrid warfare under the sea to disrupt the European economy through cables, internet cables, pipelines. All of our economy under the sea is under threat.”

Sweden’s energy and industry minister, Ebba Busch, said it had been a tough announcement to make, but that security policy was paramount. While many Nato countries are rapidly expanding their wind power, Busch said they were “cleaning up an incredibly messy system”.

Nato recently established a centre dedicated to undersea security at Marcom’s UK-based headquarters in Northwood, north-west London.

Cover photo: Sweden’s defence minister, Pål Jonson, said the projects could have interfered with sensors and radars vital to the country’s defence. Photograph: Universal Images Group/Getty Images