The Government hopes to launch a “massive” tender in 2025 to deploy a whole series of offshore wind farms and thus meet its energy objectives, Secretary of State for the Sea, Hervé Berville, said on Monday.
The State has just started a global planning phase by coast of the maritime areas to be developed, to extend offshore wind energy in order to face the country’s energy and climate challenges.
“By the end of 2024 at the latest, we have specific areas, and in 2025 we have a massive tender,” Hervé Berville told reporters on the sidelines of the Renewable Energy Union’s annual Marine Energy Meetings.
The State is aiming for an interim target of 18 gigawatts (GW) of marine parks in 2035. Some 8 GW are currently built or in the pipeline, therefore there are 10 GW left to allocate to developers, a very large volume that corresponds to about ten parks
10 GW to reach
“Faced with this energy wall, we need a substantial tender,” stressed Hervé Berville.
Today, only one marine park operates in France, off Saint-Nazaire, while the UK and Denmark already have several giant marine parks.
Knowing that it takes 7 to 8 years to commission a park in France, “it would be desirable to have a tender for 10 GW” in 2025, he added, but without committing to this volume. “We will determine the range” at the end of the planning work, according to the connection capabilities, ports, availability of skills, etc.
“We must be lucid about the fact that we cannot procrastinate,” he said, harping on the issue of energy security: “France’s energy cycle for 2035-40 is far from guaranteed.”
The promoters of the project insisted on Monday on the importance of visibility in the medium and long term, in particular for industrial reasons (capacity to supply materials in a context of European competition in wind energy, capacity deployment…).
The schedule will include a public debate organized over several weeks in the fall on all seafronts, under the auspices of the National Commission for Public Debate (CNDP).
The planning maps should be “ready” by mid-2024, Maritime Affairs Director General Eric Banel said on Monday, “reasonably optimistic that this deadline will be met.”
Source: BFM TV
