European leaders meet to reinvigorate their ambitions on offshore wind

At the summit, eight countries - Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway and Ireland - and the European Commission are to agree on the terms of the installation of some 20.000 offshore wind turbines in the North Sea by 2050.

At a time when China represents 82% of wind power orders, according to the renewable energy specialist firm Wood Mackenzie, "the EU cannot lose its momentum".

"We have to make sure that we choose the right path" for the energy transition, Danish Energy Minister Lars Aagaard stressed to AFP.

In this Scandinavian country, which opened its first offshore wind farm in 1991, more than 40% of the energy used comes from wind turbines.

Countering Chinese competition

In the port of Odense, where European leaders will meet, "more than a thousand wind turbines have been produced, destined for the whole of Europe and even abroad, to the Philippines and the United States," the port director, Carsten Aa, explained to AFP.

In 2011, the first nacelle -- the casing that houses the components needed to operate the turbine, including the generator and transmission -- was produced by global turbine giant Vestas at the Lindø site, where shipowner Maersk had built its ships until two years earlier.

Since then, some 1.500 offshore wind turbine components have been built there.

"We are now the world leader, but the Chinese are knocking at our door," warned Mr Aa.

Here, most of the port's surface area is devoted to wind power. Vestas produces nacelles, masts and foundations, elements that are too large to be built elsewhere and to be transported before being loaded onto ships and installed at sea.

"If we want to achieve all the political ambitions, we need to see even greater production in European ports," Mr Aa insisted.

He hopes to show the way to counter Chinese competition.

"We have transformed from an outdated industrial area into a modern, state-of-the-art production facility by using former shipyard workers and training them to produce wind turbines," he said.

In France, Nantes Saint-Nazaire Port recently presented a project to develop a platform for the deployment of future offshore wind farms.

The port of Odense continues to expand. The shipyard employed 2.700 people when it closed in 2009, and there are now more than 3.200 working at the site, which has grown by 18% in the last two years.

"What makes us unique is that the area is very large, (...) we have the area around the old shipyard to be able to develop new things, new production halls," says Søren Rask, the port's head of security who started his career as a blacksmith at the shipyard.