The Ties That Bind: Energy Connectivity in the Age of Geopolitical Turbulence

Europe's energy system is undergoing a profound transformation driven by geopolitics, security concerns, and climate objectives.

This report examines the strategic fault lines, maps how the Baltic-Nordic region is navigating the new reality and what policymakers must do to stay ahead of it, charting a course toward genuine resilience. Energy infrastructure operators and policymakers must abandon assumptions of reliability and actively hedge against failure through diversification, redundancy, stronger legal frameworks, and collective protection.

The EU has adopted a dual strategy: strengthening internal connectivity while deliberately reducing exposure to high-risk external dependencies, most notably on Russia. This structural break from pre-2022 market dynamics is now reshaping energy policy across the continent. Electricity and gas markets are unlikely to return to old patterns; connectivity is increasingly evaluated through a geopolitical lens, reflecting emerging blocs, vulnerabilities, and strategic priorities.

Renewable energy has been reframed as a foundation of industrial strategy and geopolitical resilience, yet Europe’s grids remain underdeveloped and insufficiently future-proofed. This infrastructure gap threatens the EU’s credibility across climate, competitiveness, and security domains. Meanwhile, the EU’s pursuit of energy independence through REPowerEU—aiming to phase out Russian fossil fuel imports by 2027–28—has advanced unevenly. The EU remains the largest buyer of Russian LNG and pipeline gas, and political momentum has slowed due to internal divisions, energy price concerns, and lobbying by Moscow-friendly actors. Substituting one supplier for another does not deliver genuine energy security; that requires phasing out fossil fuel imports altogether.

Regional dynamics illustrate how energy independence and connectivity can sit in tension.

• The Nordic-Baltic countries have largely eliminated dependence on Russian energy, making a return to previous arrangements unlikely.
• Hungary and Slovakia, by contrast, exemplify what this report characterises as ‘malignant connectivity’—where infrastructure creates strategic vulnerability rather than resilience.
• Germany, Poland, and Lithuania each illustrate distinct dimensions of this challenge: the entanglement of energy policy with industrial interests; the tension between sovereignty and market integration; and the strategic choice between consolidation and regional ambition.

Undersea infrastructure represents a particular vulnerability. Physically exposed, difficult to monitor, slow to repair, and poorly protected under international law, subsea cables and pipelines are susceptible to disruption—as incidents in the Baltic Sea have illustrated.

Europe’s energy future will be defined by how successfully it reconciles independence with interdependence, security with integration, and climate ambition with geopolitical and economic reality. Connectivity, especially intra-EU and regional, will remain both a crucial element in this balancing act and a double-edged sword in a world experiencing rapid transformations and sudden ruptures. This report provides the following recommendations.

At the international and regional level, stakeholders should:

• Maintain and strengthen regional connectivity. Cross-border cooperation ensures economies of scale and security of supply during the energy transition, and is particularly essential for small states. Regional market integration must be reinforced despite the pressures of deglobalisation.
• Reinforce regional capacity coordination. More closely coordinated or joint regional capacity mechanisms could reduce fragmentation and lower costs, improve overall security of supply, and discourage unilateral restrictions and national isolation strategies.
• Embed grid expansion into EU resilience strategies. EU resilience initiatives should incorporate physical grid expansion alongside protection measures.
• Elevate infrastructure protection within regional cooperation. Physical security is now central to energy sovereignty. Framing interconnectors and offshore assets as shared defence infrastructure can reduce political resistance. Joint risk assessments and coordinated resilience planning should underpin regional frameworks.
• Close legal and regulatory gaps on undersea infrastructure. Stronger international protections for undersea infrastructure should be pursued within EU, NATO, and UN frameworks.
• Lean into hydrogen connectivity. As electricity interconnection becomes politically contentious, regional hydrogen corridors offer a more politically durable pathway for cooperation, with strategic framing and reduced exposure to price politics.
• Tighten sanctions against Russia. EU sanctions must suppress Russia’s fossil fuel revenues and close existing loopholes.
• Broaden EU state aid flexibility for resilience projects. EU state aid rules should allow for faster approval of investments in resilience and backup capacity. A dedicated security-of-supply exemption and reduced administrative delays would bolster infrastructure readiness while limiting market distortions.

At the national level, we advise to:

• Recognise Finland as the anchor partner. Finland treats interconnection as a strategic asset rather than a price risk. Deepened cooperation on grid planning, balancing, and hydrogen corridors should remain a strategic priority.
• Hedge against Nordic fragmentation. Baltic states should not assume solidarity during crises and must deepen internal integration while expanding domestic production, storage, and flexibility.
• Avoid overreliance on Germany. Connectivity should instead focus on hydrogen, storage integration, and industrial decarbonisation.
• Frame cooperation with Poland in terms of energy sovereignty. Sovereignty-based messaging and emphasis on resilience and system control can support deeper cooperation.
• Prioritise, upgrade, and secure existing connections. Incidents such as the Estlink 2 and Balticconnector disruptions highlight geopolitical and technical vulnerabilities that require preventative maintenance and robust infrastructure protection.
• Reduce single-point dependence. Supply routes should be diversified through stronger domestic generation, storage, and land-based connections to avert outages that may cause major price or security shocks.
• Integrate hybrid threats into energy planning. Closer coordination between regulators, cybersecurity authorities, and security and intelligence agencies is a prerequisite for ensuring that system planning reflects real-world threat environments.
• Incorporate safeguards in capacity mechanisms. Capacity mechanisms should include environmental safeguards and periodic reviews to ensure short-term security measures do not undermine long-term decarbonisation.
• Enhance state supervision of balancing markets. Rising costs can fuel political pressure towards isolationist policies; effective governance can prevent fragmentation and maintain regional integration.
• Balance security and economic interests through structured engagement. Structured communication between government and industry is essential, and security-related costs should align with consumer willingness to pay to avoid social backlash.
• Integrate distributed production in connectivity planning. Energy system development should favour distributed generation — including hydrogen, biomethane, microgrids, and energy communities — to strengthen resilience and security of supply as a strategic priority in future connectivity planning.

This report was prepared with the support of the ICDS research partner in energy and climate security, Elering AS