Emden Offshore Days: Planning Certainty Key Topic

The topic of planning certainty has taken a central role at the 3rd Emden Offshore Days.

While attending an evening reception at the Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday (4th September) within Offshore Days, the president of the Industry and Commerce Department for East Frisia and Papenburg (IHK), Dipl. Engineer Wilhelm Alfred Brüning, stressed that “a clear and reliable framework conditions are essential and must not be subject to election results.”

More than 300 visitors came to the event at the Johannes a Lasco Library in Emden. In addition to numerous representatives from politics, business, management, and science; regional members of the German Bundestag and the Lower Saxony State Parliament also accepted the invitation.

CEOs of this year’s main sponsors of the Offshore Days, Enova and EWE, reported on planning and construction of Germany’s first commercial wind farm Riffgat in their presentations. In just 14 months of construction and with an investment of around EUR 450 million, the companies had built a wind farm in the North Sea comprising 30 offshore wind turbines with a total output of 108 megawatts.

Speaking about the differences between offshore and onshore energy Brüning emphasized that the development of offshore wind energy faces a myriad of challenges posed by the nature, to which it has to find answers and ways to cope with them. Offshore wind is the pillar of the energy transition, he added.

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Offshore WIND Staff, September 6, 2013; Image: EWE