Nine European countries pledge to massively expand North Sea wind power to boost energy security and cut reliance on foreign powers, sending a clear message to Russia.
HAMBURG: Nine European nations have vowed to massively expand North Sea offshore wind power to boost climate-friendly energy and reduce dependence on Russia.
Germany, France, the UK and Denmark were among the countries signing an agreement to turn the North Sea into the “world’s largest clean energy reservoir”.
EU Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jorgensen said the deal sent a “very clear signal to Russia”.
“No more will we let you blackmail member states of the European Union and no more will we help indirectly fund the war in Ukraine,” he said.
The European Union has been working to wean itself off Russian energy since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Leaders met in Hamburg for the third North Sea summit, building on a 2023 pledge to develop 300 gigawatts of clean energy capacity by mid-century.
Monday’s “Hamburg Declaration” envisages 100 GW of that target being delivered quickly through an “unprecedented fleet of joint offshore wind projects”.
That would be enough to power roughly 100 million homes.
The agreement aims to strengthen Europe’s “resilience” and “security of supply,” said Germany’s minister for economic affairs and energy, Katherina Reiche.
According to the UK’s energy ministry, the new projects will include wind farms at sea directly connected to more than one country.
In response to US President Donald Trump branding wind farms “losers,” British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said “offshore wind is for winners”.
He said wind farms provide “homegrown, clean energy that we control,” not energy under “the control of the dictators and the petro-states”.
Jorgensen also addressed whether the EU wanted to reduce dependence on US gas imports following Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, a Danish territory.
“We want to trade and deal with the US on as many issues as possible,” he said, adding “we are not aiming at replacing one dependency with a new dependency”.
“We want to grow our own energy, and our strategy in the future is to become free of gas,” Jorgensen concluded.
