The electric potential of a point charge at the origin is
For the two charges forming the dipole,
The first-order Taylor expansion at large is
and therefore, with the electric dipole moment ,
to leading order. Taking the interaction of a second dipole with the corresponding electric field gives the stated electric dipole-dipole interaction
Let the lattice spacing be and write the central dipole as
Its two horizontal neighbours have moment . For either one, the expression in parentheses, after extracting , is
Its two vertical neighbours have moment , and each contributes instead
Adding all four nearest-neighbour interactions and using the Pythagorean trigonometric identity gives
The angle has cancelled, so the energy is independent of .