The massive turbines rise from the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea, powered by a persistent maritime breeze. Located 20 kilometres off the Polish resort town of Leba, the turbines installed by Baltic Power will supply energy to some 1.5 million households.
As Poland's energy transition takes hold, and renewable energy overtakes coal for the first time, the country is multiplying its energy investments in the Baltic region.
To understand Poland’s shift to the north, one might look east. Poland’s coal mines are “a legacy of Soviet times”, said Zuzanna Nowak, an energy and climate analyst from Opportunity, a foreign-policy think-tank in Warsaw. “Coal was reasonable to exploit and sell, and it was a natural element of the Polish energy system.”
The changes on the global climate scene, including the Paris Agreement of 2016, “made us realize we cannot only use coal, but other energy sources”, said Nowak. “It was normal for us to get gas from Russia, because of the transit pipes from Russia to Germany.”
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Yet tensions over Ukraine before Russia’s full-scale invasion made Polish and EU leaders wary over importing Russian energy supplies. “Crimea [the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014] was a wake-up call. We started preparations for a liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal,” said Nowak.
Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine spurred a process that had already been set in motion years earlier. It was “a breakthrough year for the Polish gas sector”, when Russian gas, previously accounting for 87% of all gas imported to Poland, plummeted to 20%, according to a report released by Opportunity.
Russian energy out, Nordic energy in
The option was to turn north, which was “a natural choice”, according to Nowak.
“Not only Poland but the EU realized that there had to be alternatives to Russian energy sources,” she said. A Baltic Pipe offshore pipeline opened in the fall of 2022 with a route running from Norway via Denmark through the Baltic Sea to Poland.
A gas interconnection between Poland and Lithuania was also established, “boosting energy security in the region by connecting the Baltic and Finnish with the Polish markets”, announced the European Commission in 2022.
The sea is also helping Poland with the construction of nuclear power plants. While not ideal for vacationers, its cold waters are amenable for reactor cores. Poland’s first nuclear power plant, developed by a consortium of US companies and scheduled to go into operation in 2030, will be located near the Baltic Sea coast.
Poland’s commitment to the Baltic and Nordic countries is as much about energy as about foreign policy. "Poland can’t rely on our central European neighbors when it comes to dealing with energy,” said Nowak. “The Visegrád Group (V4), made up of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, has a diversity of perceptions when it comes to analyzing the threat of Russia, a diversity of cooperation pathways and a diversity of reliance on external suppliers – Poland didn't follow the same path.”
While current political conditions might make it hard for V4 to function at a political level, Nowak believes that Poland could “guarantee” the southern countries access to the sea, “not just for energy purposes but also for all other goods that might be exported”.
A zone of hybrid confrontation
The massive investment for energy infrastructure in and around the Baltic Sea is not without its risks. A ship believed to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” was seen performing suspicious maneuvers in May near a power cable connecting Poland and Sweden. In another case, Finnish prosecutors charged the captain and two officers of another ship linked to Russia with sabotage, after it was found dragging an anchor along the Gulf of Finland seabed last December.
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These efforts interfere with Poland's "major projects, both onshore and offshore, including not just our wind power project but also our nuclear power plant”, said the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk after the incident in May.
The Baltic Sea is more monitored today than ever before, with new NATO military activity in the area to protect critical infrastructure. “This isn’t just about energy strategy but industrial strategy – it’s about jobs, ports, shared expertise. The Baltic Sea can be a shared engine for the energy transition, but it’s not yet used to its full potential,” said Nowak.
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