The Energy Security Centre of Excellence is a hub of expertise that provides the Alliance with strategic insights on energy security, its effect on the Alliance’s operations and the future of secure, resilient energy supply chains. The Centre simultaneously works to integrate Allied and Partner nations by fostering exchanges of ideas and information that advance the Alliance’s ability to maintain energy security in the present and future.
Located in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Energy Security Centre of Excellence is responsible for supporting the Alliance’s overall mission set by providing comprehensive and timely expertise on all aspects of energy security. Given the importance of stable energy supplies for the Alliance’s readiness and resiliency, the Centre occupies a strategic position within the advisory functions of the Alliance. The Centre provides subject matter expertise through three main lines of effort: providing awareness of energy developments with security implications for NATO; improving the energy efficiency of NATO forces through common standards and reduction of fossil fuel usage; and demonstrating energy-efficiency solutions. These important perspectives range across the four pillars of the Centres of Excellence programme and assist the Alliance with its overall integration, readiness and resiliency initiatives.
Over the past decade, the focus on creating clean, stable and resilient energy production and sources has been an emphasis of the Alliance and Allied Command Transformation. To achieve a sustainable future energy strategy for Alliance forces, the Centre has conducted wide-ranging research that will culminate in the development of the NATO Operational Energy Concept. Additionally, the Centre will pursue research topics throughout 2023 that will include a study on the challenges and risks of offshore wind farms for energy and military security, developments for military mobility until 2050 using synthetic and carbon free fuels and a study of the consequences of climate change on Allied and Partner nations. Together, these topics inform key authorities within the Alliance’s ecosystem and guide future decision making with an emphasis on militarily viable clean and stable energy solutions.
To help guide the Centre’s research, it also employs an array of subject matter experts who oversee strategic analyses on broad-based risk factors, for short-, medium-, and long-term horizons. In early 2023, the Centre completed a report on the impact of COVID-19 on NATO energy security, which assessed the energy-related fallout of disruptions to global supply chains and energy markets on Alliance energy security. The Centre will follow this publication with an analysis of key mineral markets within the framework of warfighting technology as well as a forecast of the energy security and logistic consequences of the Alliance’s Middle Eastern energy sources. Through these publications, the Centre combines lessons learned with its subject matter expertise to guide future analysis and decision-making.
In addition to strategic analyses, the Centre ensures Alliance readiness through a series of table-top exercises. In November 2023, the Centre will conduct the 2023 Baltic Coherent Resilience Table Top Exercise, which will focus on maritime and offshore energy installations in the Baltic Sea. As part of the exercise, the Centre will challenge its participants by imagining a series of hybrid, terrorist or maritime-based attacks on installations in the Baltic Sea, with the goal of constructing a collaborative response across national authorities. This exercise is one of several similar exercises the Centre will hold during 2023, each covering a different geographic and/or thematic issue within Allied and Partner nations’ energy security.
While the table-top exercises are meant to provide interactive learning opportunities for concept development and experimentation, the Centre also holds events to further educate and train Allied and Partner nation stakeholders. These seminars include a series of standing courses on Energy Security Strategic Awareness, Advanced Net Zero Energy, Water and Waste Training and Overall Energy Security. Additionally, the Centre fosters collaboration with Allied and Partner nations by making its energy security trainings accessible in multiple languages, thus advancing the Alliance’s collective knowledge of key energy security topics.
NATO-accredited Centres of Excellence are (multi-) nationally established and sponsored entities, which offer recognized expertise and experience within a defined subject matter area to the benefit of the Alliance. Centres of Excellence are not part of the NATO Command Structure, but form part of the wider framework that contributes to the functioning of the Alliance. Headquarters Supreme Allied Commander Transformation coordinates the activities of the Centres of Excellence, ensuring that their outputs align with Allied Command Transformation’s Programme of Work. For more information about NATO-accredited Centres of Excellence, see the 2023 Centres of Excellence Catalogue.
