European leaders and industry representatives are meeting today in Hamburg to discuss cooperation on energy and security in the North Sea. The meeting was announced by the German government, UNN reports.
Details
For the German government, this is the first international North Sea summit hosted in Hamburg, "where the main focus will be on expanding cross-border cooperation on energy supply to Europe," the German government stated.
At the summit, the UK and Europe, according to the British government, signed a historic pact to advance the future of clean energy – a historic clean energy security pact – the Hamburg Declaration – to implement large-scale offshore wind energy projects in shared waters.
The new partnership aims to deliver 100 GW of offshore wind energy by 2050 through large-scale joint projects between European countries, including Germany, Norway, France, and Denmark, utilizing Europe's shared rich energy resources in the North Sea.
These will include new "hybrid offshore wind assets" – offshore wind farms directly connected to multiple countries. This joint commitment is outlined in the Hamburg Declaration, agreed upon today at the summit.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, DW notes, stated that he wants the North Sea to become "the world's largest clean energy reservoir."
This is the third such summit, held for the first time in the northern German city of Hamburg, with the previous two taking place in Ostend, Belgium, and Esbjerg, Denmark. It was convened, as stated, as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine to help Europe reduce its dependence on fossil fuel imports, particularly from Russia.
The Hamburg Declaration, according to the British government, is to be signed by the energy ministers of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway, in addition to Britain.
Representatives of the European Commission and NATO, as well as over 100 company representatives, were also expected to be present.
As Politico notes, the Hamburg summit "has taken on new significance after Trump's attempts to force his NATO allies to hand over Greenland pushed the transatlantic alliance to the brink – and perhaps beyond."
"Domestic clean energy," UK Energy Minister Ed Miliband and EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen wrote in Politico on Monday, "offers an alternative to the EU's growing reliance on imported liquefied natural gas, most of which now comes from the US."
"Such a strong dependence on fossil fuels, whether it comes from Russia or anywhere else, cannot provide us with the energy security and prosperity we need. It makes us incredibly vulnerable to the volatility of international markets and pressure from external players," they noted.
However, as the publication writes, support for clean energy cannot hide the fact that gas, although showing a slow decline, still accounts for almost a quarter of Europe's energy supply and is central to Europe's heavy industry. Also, not all European countries and companies are convinced that there is a need to stop supplies of wind turbines from Texas. "Trump knows that Europe is in his hands. Last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he ridiculed wind turbines and the Europeans who install them, calling them 'losers,'" the publication writes.
As Politico notes, his personal interest was barely concealed. The US is the world's largest LNG exporter, and since the EU began shutting off Russian gas pipelines, the bloc's imports from the US have quadrupled, according to data from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the publication writes, "boasted in Davos" that US exports had been able to "displace almost all Russian gas" and predicted "sustained energy trade" in the future; a trade that "in the short term... will be dominated by exports from the US to Europe." He called on the EU to remove barriers to a new era of transatlantic gas exports, mentioning the European carbon border tax and corporate environmental regulations.
He said the US was "working with our colleagues here in Europe to remove these barriers."
European officials, the publication notes, have spoken positively about American gas as a key part of their strategy to move away from Russian energy, a savior from across the seas – alongside, of course, the growing use of renewables such as wind and solar.
But the growing dependence has taken on a whole new geopolitical significance in the Trump era, the publication writes.
"The big weakness was and is that fossil fuel supplies were moved from one unreliable source of supply (Russia) to a number of other potentially unreliable sources of supply, and that over-reliance on any of them risked a repeat of previous problems," said a European Commission official involved in EU efforts to reduce dependence on Russian gas.
"I just didn't think we'd have to worry about the US – that was before Trump," he indicated.
According to German government officials familiar with the matter, a total of three declarations are planned to be signed at the summit. In addition to the Hamburg Declaration, there is also a declaration to be signed by energy ministers focusing on the necessary grid infrastructure for offshore wind farms, including financing measures and accelerating planning measures, as well as a joint pact on offshore wind investment for the North Sea, signed by energy ministers and key industry players.
On security in the Far North
"Given the composition of the meeting, I am confident that security in the Far North will also be of interest to the participants," said Merz's spokesman Steffen Meyer.
The Arctic island of Greenland has been a major topic of discussion over the past few weeks due to US President Donald Trump's persistent efforts to acquire the Danish territory.
Trump stated that a "framework" agreement had been reached with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte; however, no details regarding what this might mean were disclosed.