Minister Darragh O'Brien in Hamburg for the North Sea Summit

It was a pleasure to welcome Ireland's Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment, Darragh O'Brien T.D. to Hamburg for the North Sea Summit.

Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs & Energy Katharina Reiche convened the meeting of Heads of State and Energy Ministers.

The focus of this summit, themed 'From National to Regional', was on collectively developing the North Seas region into Europe's ‘green power plant’ and planning to install up to 300GW of offshore wind capacity by 2050.

Ireland has an ambitious offshore wind programme, targeting 5GW of capacity in construction by 2030, and 37GW by 2050. Last year, we held an extremely successful auction result, procuring an additional 900 Megawatts of renewable energy capacity at a very competitive price.

At the Summit, Minister O'Brien – along with the energy ministers of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom – signed the Hamburg Declaration of Energy Ministers, which commits to:

• a more regional approach on cross-border infrastructure planning
• closer cooperation on the protection of offshore energy infrastructure

development of an Offshore Financing Framework to strengthen the business case for offshore wind in the North Seas.

While there, Minister Darragh O'Brien TD & Ambassador Maeve Collins met with Minister Katharina Reiche. Additionally, Minister O'Brien held the following engagements:

• Closed Ministerial Meeting Discussion on the Offshore Financing Framework
• Stakeholder Panel on Ensuring a Business Case for Offshore Wind

Chaired a Roundtable Discussion on Offshore Renewable Hydrogen

Read more in the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment official press release: https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-climate-energy-and-the-environment/press-releases/minister-obrien-concludes-successful-north-sea-summit/

📸 Photos courtesy of the German Press Agency (dpa)/ Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy