Good news at last for the development of offshore wind projects in France -

While France had launched in 2011 a very ambitious offshore wind farm development program, aiming to reach 6 GMW of wind turbine installations at sea and of marine energies by 2020, the projects awarded in 2012 and 2014, following two calls for tenders (Round 1 and Round 2), for a total capacity of almost 3 GW, have progressed with great difficulty. The commissioning of the first project, which was originally scheduled for 2020, has now been postponed by two or three years.

In addition to commercial and pricing issues, one of the major reasons of such difficulties was the challenges to the various administrative authorizations granted for the development of the projects. Recent court decisions have dismissed the various challenges, thus unblocking the development of the projects and, hopefully, reducing the opponents’ will to challenge future projects.