German Offshore Conference with High-Ranking Danish Participants

For hardly any other branch of industry is international cooperation as important as for the offshore industry. Frequently, companies from all over the world cooperate in the construction and operation of offshore wind farms.

Denmark is an important partner for Germany’s offshore industry. A major part of the offshore wind turbines is already produced in Denmark and shipped to Germany from there.

Further developing the German-Danish cooperation is the professed goal of the state government of Schleswig-Holstein and the Kingdom of Denmark. In honour of this occasion, Susanne Beck Nielsen, the Danish Honorary Consul in Hamburg, will inaugurate the offshore conference OBMC 2013 in Husum on 24 September 2013. This will be followed by a speech by Dr. Ingrid Nestle, Secretary of State for Energy of Schleswig-Holstein.

During the event, company representatives can get to know each other via matchmaking. The conference will, among others, include presentations by speakers from the Danish Wind Industry Association, the platform Offshorenergy.dk and the Westcoast Port Rømø about the economic and political framework conditions for the offshore industry in Denmark. Company representatives from EWE, RWE and Vattenfall will report about their practical experiences from the construction phases of the Riffgat, Nordsee Ost and Dan Tysk offshore wind farms. Furthermore, conference delegates can participate in field trips to an offshore training facility and the offshore ports Havneby on Rømø and Esbjerg on 24 and 25 September.

“We expect an intensified exchange with the Danish partners in particular for smaller companies in Germany and in the border region, because the upcoming amendment of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and the arrival of new market participants from Asia could lead to an increase of the cost and innovation pressure on the companies. The benefit of cooperation between companies in order to limit or decrease risks and costs and to find new customers will increase in the short run,“ says Martin Schmidt, project director of the network agency windcomm schleswig-holstein.

Windcomm organises the OBMC offshore event in cooperation with the Enterprise European Network (EEN), the “Danish German Region’s Growth Centre” project and the Maritime Cluster Northern Germany.This year, OBMC celebrates its fifth anniversary. A total of 1000 international experts have already visited the offshore wind energy conference.

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Press release, September 17, 2013; Image: Christine Döbert