France Choose Builder for its Biggest Offshore Wind Farm

A consortium led by Electricité de France SA (EDF) has won a government tender to build France's largest offshore wind farm, surpassing competing bids from groups led by companies such as Engie SA and TotalEnergies SE.

The state-owned utility, along with its partners Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Enbridge Inc., has been granted the right to construct a 1-gigawatt wind farm off the coast of Normandy. This facility will have the capacity to power approximately 800,000 homes, according to a statement by the Ministry of Energy Transition on Monday. The wind farm is expected to be operational by 2031.

“Construction should begin around 2026-2027,” Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said in an interview with La Presse de La Manche, noting that the consortium must first complete the permitting process. The project is estimated to cost €2 billion ($2.15 billion), and the consortium has committed to supplying electricity from the wind farm at a rate of less than €45 per megawatt-hour.

This award strengthens EDF’s dominance in the French offshore wind market. The utility and its partners have won four of the seven tenders organized by the French government since 2012, including the most recent in 2019. French President Emmanuel Macron has set a goal for the country to establish around 50 offshore wind farms, with a total production capacity of 40 gigawatts by 2050, as part of the nation’s broader effort to become carbon neutral by mid-century.

France lags behind other European nations like the UK, Germany, Denmark, and Belgium in offshore wind development. Due to lengthy permitting processes, only one commercial wind park has been commissioned in French waters so far, with three more under construction. In response to the energy crisis exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Macron's administration has passed legislation aimed at cutting red tape and accelerating the approval of renewable energy projects to reduce the country’s dependence on imported fossil fuels.

For the Normandy offshore wind tender, the French government had shortlisted five other bidders or consortia, including Shell Plc, Iberdrola SA, a joint venture between Engie and EDP Renovaveis SA, and two separate groups led by TotalEnergies and Vattenfall AB.

Many of these same companies are also among the 10 selected by the government to compete in a tender for the country’s first commercial-scale floating wind farm, planned off the southern coast of Brittany. The winner of that tender is expected to be announced by the end of the year.

Additionally, most of these companies have been shortlisted for future auctions to build a 1-gigawatt wind farm off Oleron Island on the Atlantic coast, as well as another 1.5-gigawatt wind farm off the coast of Normandy.