El gobierno de Suecia ha bloqueado la construcci\u00f3n de 13 \u201cGranjas E\u00f3licas Off-shore\u201d en su litoral mar\u00edtimo, como consecuencia de nuevos estudios que indican que las mismas, podr\u00edan afectar la capacidad de detecci\u00f3n de los radares, reduciendo el escaso tiempo de alerta temprana frente a un ataque con misiles por parte de Rusia. En este caso, existe un conflicto de intereses entre dos objetivos: Independencia energ\u00e9tica con tecnolog\u00edas limpias y sustentables, frente a la necesidad de vigilancia y defensa del espacio a\u00e9reo soberano. Otro ejemplo concreto en Europa, acerca la manera en que decisiones pol\u00edticas consideradas de naturaleza netamente civil (Industria, medio ambiente, energ\u00eda, etc), pueden afectar de manera cr\u00edtica, a los sistemas e infraestructura de seguridad y defensa nacional.<\/p>\n
BERLIN \u2014 Sweden\u2019s government this month blocked the construction of 13 offshore wind farms over concerns that they would shorten the country\u2019s early-warning window for a Russian missile attack.<\/p>\n
The decision marks another example in Europe of national security factors seeping into political decisions that were deemed civilian in nature before Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n
In this case, the issue is about two dueling interests: sustainable-energy independence and surveillance of the national airspace. That is because wind farms can interact with radar signals, reducing the quality of the situational air picture or even outright blocking out parts of the sky.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reaction time in the event of a missile attack could go from 2 minutes to 60 seconds with wind farms in the way,\u201d Swedish Defense Minister P\u00e5l Jonson wrote in a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter. They were accompanied by a schematic drawing of the wind farms casting a \u201cshadow\u201d behind them in which missiles and cruise missiles would stay undetected.<\/p>\n
The perceived threat clearly comes from Russia, with Jonson pointing out that \u201cthe proximity to the heavily militarized\u201d Russian exclave of Kaliningrad was \u201cimportant in this context.\u201d<\/p>\n
Experts speaking to Defense News for this story said wind farm radar interference is a known issue. And some expressed concern that as more and more wind farms are built, the effects could get worse unless countermeasures are put in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cRadar interference can impede air traffic control, weather forecasting, homeland security, and national defense missions,\u201d U.S. Department of Energy spokesperson wrote in an email to Defense News, while also stressing that \u201cthe vast majority of wind projects \u2026 pose no significant impacts to radar missions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Radar performance<\/b><\/p>\n
There are a number of ways that wind turbines, and especially large groups of them, can mess with the readings from a radar system. For one, they can show up on the screen because, just like any other object, they bounce back the electromagnetic waves that radar relies on. The fact that they are moving \u2013 the blades are spinning, and the turbines can change orientation \u2013 can make it more difficult for analysts to filter out the noise and find actual threats in the skies.<\/p>\n
With the wingtips rotating at a speed of up to 370 kilometers per hour (around 230 mph), they move fast enough for doppler radars to sense them as moving objects, resulting in a false positive on an operator\u2019s screen.<\/p>\n
Benjamin Karlson leads the Wind Turbine Radar Interference Mitigation program at the American Sandia National Laboratories. His team has tested various concepts at mitigating the problem, he said, but \u201cthere\u2019s no silver bullet.\u201d Radar-absorbent coating is expensive and leaves the problem of a blind spots; temporary shutoffs lead to losses for the operators of wind farms; and infill, or fallback, radars are but costly workarounds.<\/p>\n
Governments and private companies have been aware of the issue for decades, with the topic first being presented to the U.S. Congress in 2006. Considerable research has occurred in both the U.S. and U.K.<\/p>\n
In the United States, \u201cthe communication between the developers and the federal agencies has grown over the years,\u201d said Karlson. The Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, the country\u2019s weather service NOAA and others all have a stake in approving new wind farm developments. Despite these hurdles, Karlson said he wasn\u2019t aware of a single case where a wind farm proposal had to be denied outright, though adjusting the placement of individual turbines, or tweaking their dimensions, is a more common practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost potential conflicts are dealt with through minor and routine mitigation measures in the federal project evaluation process,\u201d the Department of Energy said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Radar systems vary greatly so what might work for one can be completely ineffective on another. Over-the-horizon radars, for example, might be especially affected by offshore wind farms. As the name suggests, these systems have a much greater range than other radars, which are generally limited to the line of sight of the antenna and so cannot see past the curvature of the earth.<\/p>\n
The longer-range variants bounce their beams off the ionosphere layer of the atmosphere before the waves travel back close to the surface \u2013 where wind farms can get in the way and may completely block out the signal. \u201cThere is no way of mitigating that aside from not building turbines,\u201d said Karlson.<\/p>\n
In his announcement, the Swedish defense minister did not specify what radar systems\u2019 signals the country was concerned about blocking, and Karlson said that there was not enough information to make an educated guess.<\/p>\n
Additionally, \u201cthe wind farms could also lead to reduced intelligence-gathering capabilities and disrupt sensors used to detect submarines,\u201d Jonson said in his announcement. Altogether, the construction would have \u201cunacceptable consequences for Swedish security.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly, the Swedish government thinks there is a big concern,\u201d said Karlson.<\/p>\n
Energy requirements<\/strong><\/p>\n Simultaneously, wind energy presents a crucial pillar in the clean energy transition, a topic that has gained exceptional pertinence in a Europe starved for energy since the Russian war in Ukraine. Traditionally, Europe obtained a large part of its energy from Russia, which controls vast oil and gas reserves and over decades built a network of pipelines to European countries to sell its hydrocarbons at a competitive price. While the green-energy transition predates the war, it has been turbocharged by it: Russia has used its leverage over European energy supply as a leverage and a weapon in its hybrid warfare, while European leaders have rushed to ween their countries off of Russian gas and oil.<\/p>\n According to the Swedish Energy Agency, the \u201csupply of electricity in Sweden is stable.\u201d Simultaneously, however, the government agency warned that \u201cSweden will have rising electricity prices\u201d as a direct result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n The planned wind farms would have had the potential to contribute significantly to Sweden\u2019s renewable energy production, with the rejected plans seeing turbines stretching all the way from the \u00c5land Islands along the east coast down to \u00d6resund.<\/p>\n While the government blocked the construction of the 13 proposed wind farms in the Baltic, it also greenlit the construction of the \u201cPoseidon\u201d wind farm off the country\u2019s western \u2013 NATO-facing \u2013 coast, with a maximum of 81 turbines producing up to 5.5 terawatt hours per year.<\/p>\n Sweden\u2019s government has committed itself to double the country\u2019s annual electricity production in the next twenty years, in anticipation of higher consumption. A buildup of the country\u2019s nuclear power capacity is supposed to bear the brunt of this burden, though critics have pointed out that demand is expected to increase faster than new power reactors can go online.<\/p>\n Similar trade-offs between wind farm construction and radar visibility have had to be made in other European countries. The British and French ministries of Defense have objected to developments over similar concerns, and various other government agencies across the continent have issued guidelines for distances that should be maintained between wind farms and different types of radar stations.<\/p>\n Both energy independence and climate change have increasingly entered the realm of national security in national government across Europe and the world, with leaders seeing them as integral parts of their countries\u2019 defense and prosperity. The Swedish government\u2019s decision points the spotlight on one dimension of this interaction that has, until now, flown under the radar.<\/p>\n