Taoiseach Leo Varadkar joined the leaders of France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg along with European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen and representatives from Norway and the UK at a major wind energy summit in Ostend, Belgium.

In a joint op-ed, the group had one simple message “We need offshore wind turbines, and we need a lot of them.”

While the summit was focused on increasing wind production from the North Sea, the ambition extends to Ireland’s Atlantic coast. Overall, the leaders want to increase output from European off-shore wind to 120 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 and 300 GW by 2050.Ireland’s target is for 5 GW of offshore capacity by 2030.

While the industry has welcomed the ambitions, there were concerns raised by WindEurope about the scale of the investment required and the need for extra recruitment in the sector.

The body also pointed out that the plan needs an extra 20 GW of infrastructure every year while Europe currently only has the capacity to add 7 GW a year.

French President Emmanuel Macron emphasised that the supply chain for the extra capacity needs to be based in Europe, for both employment and security reasons.