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Marine Wind Farms: France announced another auction for offshore
Author:Mariusz Dasiewicz
The French government announced another auction for investors planning to launch offshore wind farms. At the same time, the French authorities have finalised negotiations on the reduction of tariffs granted in the first auctions for offshore wind energy, which was carried out a few years ago, writes the portal gramwgreene.pl.
Paris announced an auction for investors wanting to build wind farms with a total capacity of 500 MW, which will be built near Dunkirk.
Investors will have four months to submit offers. In addition to the French energy companies EDF and Engie are also known as Spanish Iberdrola, Swedish Vattenfall, Norwegian Equinor, Portuguese EDPR, Canadian developer Boralex and Belgian company Elicio.
[related1] Prior to the launch of the next auction, the French authorities had already explained the confusion that arose after Paris decided to enter into negotiations to reduce the rates for the production of energy from offshore windmills which were awarded in previous auctions.
These auctions were held in 2012-14. The investors who won them gained the right to sell energy – as under current conditions – at very high prices.
It is a 2012 award-winning project by the Spanish Iberdrola and Eole RES of the St-Brieuc 496 MW, as well as the 498 MW projects notified by EDF.
[related2] The renegotiation of the terms of energy sales also included two power projects after 496 MW, which were notified in the 2014 auction. In this case, the investor is a consortium with the French energy company Engie.
Now as a result of the negotiations undertaken, the beneficiaries of these auctions agreed to reduce the energy prices guaranteed several years ago from EUR 200/MWh to EUR 150/MWh.
The French association of the offshore wind energy sector FEE (France Energie Eoline), referring positively to the final negotiation of the French government with investors, assumed that this would reduce the support costs for these investments by a total of around EUR 15 billion.
