North Sea summit: Bordering countries to pledge increase in wind energy
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Transcript
00:00 Covering the summit is our correspondent, Dave Keating.
00:02 He joins me on the program now.
00:04 Dave, the timing of this sit down is interesting, isn't it?
00:08 Because it comes in the wake of revelations
00:11 about Russian spying in the North Sea
00:14 and even reports that Russia might
00:16 be planning to sabotage European energy infrastructure.
00:20 Presumably, that's a key talking point
00:23 for these European leaders today.
00:28 Yeah, the leaders of these nine North Sea area countries
00:31 are arriving just now as we speak.
00:34 And there's many things on the agenda here at the summit.
00:36 Obviously, countries that share a sea
00:38 have a lot that they cooperate on.
00:40 But that topic that you mentioned
00:42 about Russian sabotage and espionage in the North Sea
00:45 is really looming over this summit.
00:48 After all, there's just been recent revelations
00:50 that Russian ships disguised as fishing boats
00:54 or scientific exploration vessels
00:57 were exploring just off the coast of where
00:59 I'm standing right now in the waters visible to the shore,
01:03 looking at Belgium's wind turbine infrastructure.
01:08 Belgium, basically the entire coast,
01:09 is now full of wind turbines about 40 kilometers
01:13 off the coast.
01:14 That's why Belgium decided to host this summit here,
01:16 because Belgium has really been a leader in wind power.
01:20 But also, it's very concerned about the safety of those wind
01:22 turbine installations.
01:23 So last week, there was this broadcast
01:26 by the Nordic broadcasters, which
01:28 traced some of these Russian vessels,
01:30 found them hanging around wind farms around the North Sea,
01:34 also looking at the cables that collect those wind
01:37 farms for electricity, and also gas pipelines.
01:41 I think the big question here is,
01:43 what can Western European countries do about this?
01:46 Because of course, they don't have great relations
01:48 to speak of with Russia in order to launch an objection.
01:52 They're not at war with Russia.
01:53 But the concern is that Russia is carrying on espionage
01:57 so that it could quickly attack these assets if war does break
02:00 out between Russia and NATO, plunging Western Europe
02:03 into a panic if it loses power.
02:05 So some of the things I've heard they're going to talk about
02:07 today is not only beefing up the resilience of that undersea
02:11 infrastructure, particularly those electric cables,
02:14 but also having plans to move the military to those spots
02:17 very quickly if war were to break out,
02:20 and maybe possibly already move some military assets
02:24 to around that critical infrastructure
02:26 to make sure that it's safe.
02:29 The leaders are looking at pretty seriously
02:30 in the wake of those revelations last week, Dave.
02:33 But in terms of wind energy of renewables,
02:37 that is also clearly a big focus of this summit.
02:40 Just tell us what might be agreed in the days ahead.
02:48 Well, we're expecting a pretty big announcement
02:50 on the goal for wind power in the North Sea.
02:53 So this is the second such summit.
02:55 The previous first edition of the North Sea Summit
02:57 was only those EU countries that have North Sea coastlines.
03:00 So Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany.
03:03 It's now been expanded to five others,
03:05 Ireland, UK, Norway, France, and Luxembourg,
03:08 who are either EU but not on the North Sea,
03:12 or non-EU and on the North Sea.
03:14 They want to double the commitment
03:15 that the four countries made last year.
03:17 So last year, they said they wanted to quadruple
03:19 the amount of wind power capacity in the North Sea
03:22 up to 150 gigawatts by 2050.
03:26 Today, we're expecting an announcement
03:28 that these nine countries combined
03:30 would get that to 300 gigawatts by 2050.
03:33 That is an octupling of the current capacity of the North Sea.
03:37 It would make it the biggest renewable energy generation area
03:40 in Europe, possibly the world.
03:43 So some big news on the government front,
03:45 but we're also getting some smaller project announcements.
03:47 We're expecting an announcement for an electricity cable
03:51 between the UK and the Netherlands
03:52 that would actually become the biggest electricity
03:55 interconnector in the world once completed.
03:59 We're expecting that announcement in a couple hours.
04:01 We're also expecting maybe a few surprises.
04:03 They really want to dazzle us with the announcements here
04:06 on wind energy and show that this part of Northwestern Europe
04:09 is really, really serious about increasing wind power
04:12 for many reasons, climate, of course, one of them,
04:14 but also to make sure that Europe has better energy security
04:18 and is no longer dependent on an external source
04:22 for fossil fuels like Russia.
04:24 - Dave Keating, thank you very much.