UK Offshore Wind's China Dependency Draws Sabotage Warning From Eurasia Group
Analysts say near-total reliance on Chinese components leaves British and European wind farms exposed to deliberate disruption, not just supply chain risk.
Sabotage of European offshore wind assets is a "credible scenario," Eurasia Group managing director Henning Gloystein told Montel during the week of 2026-08-31, citing what he described as a near-total dependency by the UK and EU on China for key turbine components.7
The warning is not abstract. A report in The Times, cited by Montel, estimated that a third of UK offshore wind farm capacity is linked to China — a figure that, if accurate, would represent a substantial concentration of infrastructure exposure in a single geopolitical relationship.7
Gloystein's framing echoes a concern raised four months earlier at a different venue. At the Solar 2026 seminar in Helsinki on Tuesday (2026-05-19), an analyst told Montel that Europe's reliance on Chinese-made solar components left the bloc exposed to attacks on its energy system. The argument has migrated from solar to offshore wind without the underlying dependency changing much.2
The Economist reported in May 2026 that Chinese offshore wind equipment could theoretically be used to spy on European naval operations, or that China could shut down wind farms to destabilise a grid — potentially through remote software updates or embedded chips. Those are not confirmed capabilities; they are threat vectors that governments and analysts are now taking seriously enough to act on.3
The UK government has already moved on one front. It blocked Ming Yang Smart Energy's plans to build a £1.5 billion turbine factory at Scotland's Ardersier Port, a decision that cost the project up to 1,500 jobs, according to Energy Voice. Ming Yang had identified the UK and Scotland as attractive markets given a pipeline of more than 90 GW of offshore wind projects.4
The rebuff has not deterred Ming Yang elsewhere. The Zhongshan-headquartered company joined Norwegian Offshore Wind in May 2026, deepening its push into Europe's floating wind supply chain after the UK rejection. Norway has set a target of 30 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2040, with a strong emphasis on floating wind — a market segment where Ming Yang claims its OceanX platform is the world's largest. The company reported annual revenue of approximately EUR 4.5 billion in 2025 and has more than 25,000 turbines installed globally, representing total renewable capacity exceeding 155 GW, mostly in China.4
Wood Mackenzie analyst Endri Lico estimated that Chinese wind turbine makers captured around 18% of the global market outside China in 2025, triple their 2024 share. That rate of penetration, if sustained, would make the security question harder to manage over time, not easier.3
At Ardersier Port, the fallback after Ming Yang's exit illustrates how difficult it is to replace Chinese capability. Haventus, which owns the port, signed a memorandum of understanding with China's Dajin — a maker of offshore foundations and operator of specialist transport vessels — to explore joint work in the UK and European market. Replacing one Chinese partner with a different Chinese partner does not resolve the dependency Gloystein described.6
The cost environment makes the choices starker. Rystad Energy told Montel on Wednesday (2026-05-20) that offshore wind turbine selling prices have increased 40–45% since 2020, outpacing manufacturing cost increases of 20–25% over the same period. Dwindling competition among turbine suppliers is driving up costs and risks preventing countries from reaching capacity goals. Excluding Chinese manufacturers from European supply chains would, by the arithmetic Rystad implied, push prices further.1
There is a direct precedent for infrastructure sabotage. In October 2023, a pipeline between Finland and Estonia was shut after suspected sabotage, triggering an international investigation less than a year after the Nord Stream 1 explosions. Wind farms differ from pipelines — they are dispersed, not linear — but the precedent established that European energy infrastructure is a target, not a theoretical one.5
The unresolved problem is that the UK and EU have built offshore wind ambitions on a supply chain that security agencies regard with increasing suspicion. Excluding Chinese components raises costs in a sector already struggling with margin compression. Accepting them carries risks that Gloystein and others now describe as credible rather than hypothetical. European governments have not publicly set out how they weigh those two outcomes. What happens next at Ardersier — where the port owner has turned to a second Chinese firm after the first was blocked — may be the clearest near-term test of whether that policy has any operational teeth.7,6,4