France has boosted its offshore wind power target to 1 GW per year until 2028 totalling 10 GW, double an initial target of 4.7 GW over the next decade, prime minister Edouard Phillippe said.
Referring to a 500 MW wind power tender the country issued for offshore wind off the northern coast at Dunkirk, Phillippe said in the Parliament that the project off the coast of Dunkirk shows that [construction] costs have dropped even faster when projects are well set up
France’s offshore wind capacity is planned to be 2.4 GW in 2023, reaching between 4.7 GW and 5.2 GW in 2028.
The 10-year energy plan, a draft of which was released in January, the country aims to almost double its installed renewables capacity to 113 GW by 2028, aiming to cut its reliance on nuclear power and phase out coal.
The recently released Multiannual Energy Programme (Programmation pluriannuelle de l’énergie (PPE)) has called for the tendering of around 6GW of fixed and floating offshore wind by 2028, including the ongoing Dunkirk tender.
The French TV qouted the energy minister Francois de Rugy as saying that the government was “very likely on Friday to make concrete announcements on the first offshore wind results".
A number of international energy companies responded to the tender, the results of which will be announced shortly. The competitors include EDF, Engie, Orsted and Vattenfall, and oil and gas groups Total, Shell and Equinor, submitted bids.