Europe sends more than €400 billion out of its borders every year to pay for fossil fuel imports. This financial drain represents 58% of the energy consumed on the continent, creating a systemic strategic vulnerability that goes far beyond carbon targets.
On 20 March 2026, Solarplaza hosted the webinar 'Renewable energy resilience & cyber security: From emerging risks to commercial reality' to examine these threats. The session featured insights from Gerard Reid (Co-Founder and Partner at Alexa Capital), Andreas Ditlev Duckert (Solar Investor), and Peter Baard (Strategic Advisor at Liander). This article serves as a deep-dive summary of their discussion, connecting the geopolitical, physical, and digital dots of the energy transition.
Key takeaways
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Europe remains strategically exposed, importing 58% of its energy at a cost of more than €400 billion annually.
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The 'Era of Sovereignty' defines the current phase of the energy transition, where solar and wind are treated as defense infrastructure rather than just green assets.
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Digital centralization creates a 'blackout potential' at scale, with seven manufacturers holding root-level access to over 10 GW of generation capacity.
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True resilience requires a shift to 'consequence-based' management and localized data traffic to protect the grid from global supply chain failures.
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The convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and electricity is creating an exponential demand for power that linear regulatory models cannot keep up with.
The geopolitical reality of the 'Solarcoaster'
The energy transition has entered its third major era. According to Andreas Ditlev Duckert, we have moved past the eras of 'Subsidies' and 'Cost-Competitiveness' into the 'Era of Sovereignty'. In this new phase, renewable energy is the only form of power that is truly input-independent. Unlike fossil fuels, solar requires no tankers to defend, no pipelines to cut, and no foreign fuel imports to maintain daily operations.
However, the speed of this transition is being outpaced by the 'Fifth Industrial Revolution'. Gerard Reid highlighted that the convergence of electricity and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is moving at an exponential rate. OpenAI has projected a need for 250 GW of electricity capacity by 2033 to sustain this growth. While we are installing solar at record speeds - global installations in the last 12 months could power all of Japan - our mindset remains linear. We are building a more complex system, but not necessarily a more resilient one.
Lessons from the field: When the model fails
Resilience is often ignored until a system fails. Andreas Ditlev Duckert shared a practical example from an Italian solar park where a severe hail storm destroyed 14,000 modules. While the digital monitoring dashboard reported that everything was fine, the physical reality was a total loss of production for six weeks. This highlights a gap in current asset management: we rely on forecasting models and spreadsheets, but we lack 'consequence-based' management.
Gerard Reid pointed to the history of the Berlin grid for a lesson in built-in resilience. During the Cold War, West Berlin operated as an islanded grid with its own batteries and decentralized spokes to ensure stability. Today, we have moved away from that level of localized robustness. A recent attack on the Berlin system, where a cable was set on fire, resulted in the longest blackout since the Second World War for 45,000 homes. This evidence suggests that as we electrify everything, the cost of a three-day blackout becomes a total societal collapse.
The digital 'Keys to the Kingdom'
The most significant emerging risk is not physical, but digital. Peter Baard explained that while we are decentralizing our energy generation, we have accidentally centralized its control in the cloud.
The data is sobering:
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Seven manufacturers currently have the ability to remotely manipulate more than 10 GW of generation capacity in Europe.
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Inverter-based systems have already caused 15 GW of unexpected power reductions due to configuration issues.
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A test of a 100 MW battery system showed that a single incorrect configuration parameter could cause massive oscillations, potentially taking down major interconnectors like the Slink 1 and 2.
The 'attack surface' is now massive. Most solar inverters and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are internet-facing. Peter Baard noted that researchers recently found global administrator passwords for major platforms like Solomon that lacked multi-factor authentication. If a threat actor accessed these 'keys to the kingdom', they could steer gigawatts of power on a global scale.
Protecting the internet backbone
Our reliance on the cloud also creates a geopolitical dependency on the internet backbone. Approximately 99% of international data traffic flows through undersea cables, 50% of which are owned by four major tech giants. In a crisis, the availability of these cables is not guaranteed.
To secure our energy future, we must prioritize data sovereignty. Why should Dutch or German energy traffic travel across the globe to a cloud server and back? We need to utilize local implementations and global standards that allow assets to function even if the global internet backbone is compromised.
A call for strategic resilience
The transition to a secure energy system requires more than just 'check-the-box' compliance. It requires a radical shift in how we value a kilowatt-hour. A 'secure' kilowatt-hour is more valuable than a 'cheap' one because it protects national sovereignty.
We must move toward a system defined by:
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Diversification: Spreading assets across the country to prevent single points of failure.
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Flexibility: Using electric vehicle (EV) batteries and flexible demand to balance the grid locally.
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Local Control: Reducing dependency on centralized cloud platforms for critical grid functions.
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Growth Mindset: Adopting AI and new technologies as assistants to manage this complexity, rather than fearing the change.
The opportunity in front of us is massive, but it requires us to stop treating energy assets as simple financial products and start treating them as the backbone of our national defense.
The full recordings of this webinar, including the specific presentations from Gerard Reid, Andreas Ditlev Duckert, and Peter Baard, as well as the detailed Q&A session, are available on the resource page here.
