A consortium led by French state-owned utility EDF has won a contract for a major 6,000-megawatt offshore wind project near Dunkirk in western France.
EDF’s bid in partnership with Germany’s Innogy and Canada’s Enbridge beat rivals, including utility Engie in partnership with Portugal’s EDPR, as well as energy group Total in partnership with Denmark’s Orsted.
Environment minister Francois de Rugy said nine international energy and industrial companies had shown an interest in the project, and seven had made a bid.
The ministry said the tariff proposed by the winning consortium was significantly lower than €50 ($56) per megawatt hour. That compares with €63 ($71) per megawatt hour for an onshore wind tender of around 516 MW that was awarded by the French government on June 12.
EDF’s bid was the highest-ranked by the energy markets regulator CRE, which studied the proposals, the ministry said.
The wind farm will have 45 wind turbines producing 2.3-terawatt hours of electricity per year from 2026, equivalent to the consumption of around 500,000 French households.
EDF, which operates France’s 58 nuclear reactors that accounts for more than 75 percent of the country’s electricity needs, is rapidly expanding into wind and solar generation.
Its EDF Renewables subsidiary, which manages around 13 gigawatts of installed capacity globally, has a project portfolio of more than 2 gigawatts in France. It is negotiating to participate in two projects in China totaling 500 megawatts and also developing an area with a potential of 2,500 megawatts in the United States.
Dunkirk is the fourth offshore project the group has won in France through a public-sector tender process, after the Saint-Nazaire, Fécamp and Courseulles-sur-Mer projects in 2012.