OSTEND: Nine European countries were holding a summit on Monday aimed at scaling up wind power generation in the North Sea, spurred by the fallout of the Ukraine war and the push for renewables.
Hosted by Belgium in the coastal town of Ostend, the meeting will gather the leaders of EU members France, Germany, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen also attending.
Norway and Britain will participate, too, though the UK’s energy minister was leading his delegation.
“We need offshore wind turbines — and we need a lot of them,” the leaders of the countries, including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Sunak, said in a joint op-ed published in Politico.
“We need them to reach our climate goals ensuring a more secure and independent Europe.”
The collective goal, they said, was to boost offshore wind power generation to 120 gigawatts by 2030 and at least 300 GW by 2050.
The North Sea summit is the second one to be held, after the four countries in the inaugural gathering last year — Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands — decided it was necessary to broaden cooperation.
They recognised this was “a massive undertaking” requiring “huge investments in infrastructure”.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said ahead of the summit that it would be focused on “speed of execution” and standardising equipment to build the offshore wind farms faster and cheaper.
Around 100 bosses of companies in the wind turbine supply chain were also participating in the summit.
The leaders’ op-ed emphasised the need to source expertise and parts from Europe rather than elsewhere.
“We need to make space for European value chains when it comes to green tech and diversify our sources of critical raw materials for wind turbines, batteries and the like,” they said.
Wind-Europe, the federation representing Europe’s wind energy industry, believes the summit’s ambitions are doable.
But it highlighted a lack of “adequate funding mechanisms” and recruitment in the sector.
Current policy, aimed at getting to a carbon-neutral future in Europe, “is overly focused on technological breakthroughs, rather than actual scaling up of existing supply chains”, Wind-Europe said in a statement.
The European Union recently set a goal to double the proportion of renewables in its energy mix.
— AFP
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