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Despite slow progress on bottom-fixed offshore wind compared
with its neighbors, France beat them to the punch on floating
offshore wind, naming the bidders for the largest auction to be
held so far solely for the nascent technology.
France's Ministry of Ecological Transition pre-selected 10
bidders for a 2022 auction that will see a subsidized 250-MW
floating offshore wind project in South Brittany built, the first
of three such tenders for floating wind, according to a 15
September statement.
The pre-selection of bidders follows a government consultation on
the South Brittany project last year, and the start of a
consultation on two additional 250-MW floating wind farm projects
in the Mediterranean, according to the
ministry.
The ventures set to bid to build and operate the wind
farm—including those of European oil and natural gas players
like Shell, Iberdrola, Engie, and TotalEnergies—are competing
to build the floating wind project by 2029.
France seems to be neck-and-neck with the UK, which is also seeking
to enter the emerging floating wind market after it set a 1 GW
floating wind capacity target for 2030.
State-subsidized floating wind tenders are also moving ahead in
Scotland and the wider UK, and two of the world's first
demonstration-scale floating offshore wind arrays have made
progress in the country.
The 50-MW Kincardine project off Aberdeenshire in Scotland started supplying power this
week, while Hywind Scotland was the world's first floating
offshore wind farm, beginning operations in 2017. But the projects
are demonstration size rather than commercial size, said IHS Markit
Principal Research Analyst Andrei Utkin.
The Scottish government's recent ScotWind tender for waters off
the northern-most part of the British Isles is part of a plan to
build up a combination of fixed-bottom and floating offshore wind
capacity reaching 10 GW, and the UK is has selected three floating
wind projects totaling 300 MW in the Celtic Sea for a future
tender.
France's tender has progressed further than these two because it
is past the seabed-leasing stage, Utkin told Net-Zero Business
Daily.
The French, Scottish, and UK projects will all be subsidized
using slightly different contracts-for-difference (CFD) schemes, he
said.
While the floating wind concept has long been mulled as a way to
reach stronger winds in deeper waters, the cost of manufacturing floating
offshore wind foundations has been holding the sector back,
according to early wind turbine pioneer Henrik Stiesdal.
French government's targets
France's geographic proximity to deep Atlantic Ocean waters
means that there is far more capacity within the country's maritime
boundaries for floating offshore wind than for bottom-fixed
offshore wind.
The French government wants to install about 1 GW of offshore
wind per year through 2028, but it has no commercial-scale offshore
wind projects in operation to date. The UK by comparison has over
10 GW of offshore turbines already turning.
The 250-MW floating wind project in South Britany will be the
fifth tender by the state and the ninth offshore wind project under
development in France, but it will have a lower level of subsidy
than some of the others.
In 2018, the government re-negotiated feed-in-tariffs for six
offshore wind projects approved in 2012 and 2014 with a combined
capacity of 3 GW, after deciding it wanted to pay €150/MWh
($175.90/MWh) not €200/MWh. The subsidy for the floating wind
project is capped at €120/MWh for 15 years.
France has set its sights on putting a total of 6.2 GW of
bottom-fixed and floating offshore wind capacity into operation
between 2020 and 2028. The target was laid out in the 2020 version
of its Multiannual Energy Program that will see it tender for a
total of 8.75 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2028.
Bidders for floating wind in France
Majors in the European energy sector as well as private equity
firm ventures were represented among the pre-selected bidders.
This includes Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor,
which operates Hywind Scotland and is building the larger Hywind
Tampen project in waters off its homeland.
Spanish renewables giant Iberdrola, which has bottom-fixed
offshore wind projects in operation in the North and the Baltic
seas, also pre-qualified. Iberdrola is building a fixed-bottom
facility off the French commune of Saint-Brieuc, although a
100-litre oil leak from an offshore vessel briefly paused
construction on the project this summer.
Three of the pre-selected groupings have German ties. These
bidders include energy company RWE, currently operates 17 offshore
wind farms in five countries, as well as a consortium formed by
Belgian renewable energy producer Elicio and German developer BayWa
r.e.
The shortlist also includes a consortium formed by German
renewable developer wpd, Swedish state-owned power company
Vattenfall, and Spanish-headquartered BlueFloat Energy, which is
owned by US equity firm Quantum Energy Partners.
"Vattenfall's ambition is to develop its renewable production in
France by 2030, notably based on offshore wind," said the company
in a statement on its pre-selection, noting it has been present in
France for 20 years through a retail business.
Four bidders feature French firms. Among these are a joint
venture between French utility Engie and renewable energy company
EDPR.
Another includes Shell, a subsidiary of German power generator
Energie Baden-Württemberg (EnBW), and a subsidiary of a French
state investment fund.
The third bidder with domestic ties also involves a Canadian
institutional investor. It comprises a project company of the
renewable arm of French energy company EDF and an offshore wind
investor called Maple Power, which is backed by a Canadian state
pension fund.
The final French consortium includes TotalEnergies,
Macquarie-backed fund Green Investment Group, and French
independent power producer Qair, which operates more than 600 MW of
renewable capacity in France.
The bidders will now work with the government on specifications
and how to address concerns that consultation participants raised
on the facility's impact on fishing.
Posted 22 September 2021 by Cristina Brooks, Senior Journalist, Climate and Sustainability
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