Last month, the UK government committed £1.73 million to innovative green technologies aimed at advancing the nation's clean energy transition.
UK innovators at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies will now receive government support to leverage their advancements in reducing carbon emissions across critical sectors.
These efforts are being mirrored across the pond, with President Biden's recent 2025 budget announcement, which included the prioritisation of $52 million for BOEM's (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) Renewable Energy Program, which supports his administration's goals of deploying 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030.
While it's encouraging to see these states intensify their renewable energy efforts, it's currently coming with a significant trade-off—their security.
Despite the variation in renewable power sources, they all have in common a number of distinguishing factors. They are often widely distributed, geographically remote and operating on a relatively small scale.
Critically, they are often managed and operated using under-secured digital technologies that plug directly into the legacy infrastructure of national power grids, exposing big security gaps.
New research from the cybersecurity group, Cyber Energia, has warned that UK renewables companies are faced with up to 1,000 attempted cyber attacks per day.
What's even more shocking is that just 1% of UK wind energy firms have adequate cyber protection in place.
Clearly, neither do those in Europe—2022 saw three European wind energy companies targeted by a cyber-attack that disabled their remote-control systems for approximately 7,800 wind turbines for about a day.
But this could have been even worse. The consequences of shutdowns caused by cyberattacks can range from significant inconvenience to devastating operational impact, including leakage of sensitive information and even health and safety risks.
Michael Ebinar, information security chief at German utility EnBW, commented on how geopolitical instability has ramped up the threat of hacker attacks on their operations, stating, "We established last year, after the start of the Ukraine war, that the risk of cyber sabotage has increased."
Similarly, cybersecurity expert and CTO of the global cyber security company Inpedio, Rotem Farkash, has detailed, "through my meetings with renewable start-ups over the past few years it has become increasingly obvious that these companies need to be agile in their cybersecurity defences. Protecting global renewable energy supplies from malicious actors is now more crucial than ever."
Recent data is estimating that by mid-century, 70% of global power systems will be dependent on renewable energy—derived mainly from solar, wind, tidal and geothermal sources. While this is both a refreshing and encouraging figure to see, it comes with a tinge of dread as our renewable sources remain vulnerable.
If we are to reach this figure in reality, governments and business leaders in the renewables sector need to prioritise the implementation of strong, robust cybersecurity systems.
If achieving this milestone takes a bit longer, then so be it. It's better to arrive eventually than not at all.
