By Rt Hon Charles Clarke and Dr Hugo Bromley
On 20 February the Baltic Geopolitics Programme is holding a seminar to address ‘Energy Security in the Baltic and Northern Europe’. This will take place in the House of Lords, hosted by Lord Jeffrey Mountevans, a member of our Advisory Board, and will be followed by a Reception.
We are organising this seminar, which is supported by the Foreign Office’s ‘Network of Liberty’ fund, because of the obvious geopolitical importance of the energy security challenge we face today. Its aim is to promote wider understanding and discussion of the ways in which the Baltic and Northern European countries, where possible working with the UK, can cooperate to address their own energy needs in a way which reduces dependence on importing energy from Russia.
The event will bring together politicians and decision-makers in business, government and the military from both Britain and the region, as well as academics specialising in history and geopolitics, energy policy, and green energy technology.
We have identified two central aspects of this question which will be addressed.
The first is ‘Energy supply and the green transition’, which was addressed by the Baltic Energy Security Summit in Copenhagen in August, and is of course a matter of intense focus by all countries in the region, including substantial discussion of the development and extension of renewable and nuclear energy sources.
The second is ‘Building the resilience of critical energy infrastructure’. This constant issue has been highlighted by the recent attack on the Nordstream pipeline and the attack earlier this month upon a gas pipeline in the Pasvalys region of northern Lithuania, near the Latvian border.
We are very excited by the prospect of this event and will publish more information, including the detail of the programme, nearer the time, after which it will be possible to register to participate.
