Impacts of climate change on defence-related critical energy infrastructure

This ground-breaking study addresses for the first time the links between European Union defence, energy and climate change, proposing a set of concrete recommendations to defence decision-makers on climate change mitigation and adaptation. The study explores the impacts of climate change on the European Union defence sector and armed forces, particularly via dependencies on critical energy infrastructure, their vulnerabilities, providing real-life examples to demonstrate current challenges and opportunities, and addresses emerging and future requirements for managing climate risk.

This study concludes that it is difficult for the military to implement measures to fight climate change because the armed forces are often large owners of public land and infrastructure, have a large number of staff, move large quantities of products, acquire a large number of services, and have rigorous embedded procedures. However, decisions must be taken, and actions must be expedited in the next few years if EU defence is to be climate-resilient and sustainable. Delayed action increases the risk of loss of military capability, higher costs, and potentially severe consequences for EU security.