13 Bidders Stay in Race to Build Floating Wind Farms Offshore France

The French government has selected 13 companies and consortia to advance to the second phase, the competitive dialogue phase, of the tendering procedure to build two 250 MW floating offshore wind farms in Golfe du Lion in the Mediterranean Sea.

The selected candidates include Iberdrola; Vattenfall; Ocean Winds; Cobra Instalaciones y Servicios, S.A.; Eni Plenitude; the Océole partnership led by Equinor; the consortium of BlueFloat Energy, Sumitomo Corporation, and Akuo Energy; the partnership between EDF Renewables and Maple Power, a joint venture of Enbridge and CPPIB; the partnership between BayWa re and Elicio; the partnership between RWE and Bourbon; the Les Moulins du leonis consortium of Shell and EnBW; the Marine Energy Archipelago consortium of Qair, TotalEnergies, and Corio Generation; and a consortium led by wpd.

The tendering procedure for the two wind farms was launched in March.

Over the next few months, the government will exchange draft specifications with the selected bidders. This will be adapted to the specificities of the Golfe du Lion and the Mediterranean coast, and will take into account the multiple environmental and territorial development issues raised during the public debate, the government said.

The competitive dialogue period will end at the end of 2022. The choice of the winner or winners will be made in the fall of 2023, and the commissioning of the wind farms is scheduled for 2030.

The winners of these competitive bidding procedures will be selected in 2023 and the two wind farms are expected to be commissioned by 2030.

The two wind farms are also planned to subsequently be supplemented by two extensions of 500 MW each, located nearby.

France intends to accelerate the development of offshore wind power in order to build 50 offshore wind farms by 2050, representing 40 GW of total capacity and nearly 20 per cent of electricity consumption in France.

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