We consider the Ginzburg–Landau equation in dimension two. We introduce a key notion of the vortex (interaction) energy. It is defined by minimizing the renormalized Ginzburg–Landau (free) energy functional over functions with a given set of zeros of given local indices. We find the asymptotic behaviour of the vortex energy as the inter-vortex distances grow. The leading term of the asymptotic expansion is the vortex self-energy while the next term is the classical Kirchhoff–Onsager Hamiltonian. To derive this expansion we use several novel techniques.