The lack of ambition for offshore wind in a multi-year energy plan (PPE) launched by President Emmanuel Macron this week could lead to a “catastrophic scenario for the development” of France’s maritime sector, the heads of France’s coastal regions and renewables groups lamented in a joint statement.

While envisaging a rapid expansion of onshore wind and solar, the PPE presented on Tuesday only suggests to add a mere 1.7-2.2GW of additional offshore wind capacity on top of the about 3GW already tendered off in 2012 and 2014.

“The regions and industry representatives are asking the government to review its roadmap for the offshore wind industry in order to meet the collective ambition (of at least 1GW per year) and demand to meet the Prime Minister [Édouard Philippe] as soon as possible,” the statement said.

It was signed by the presidents of the coastal regions of Brittany, Normandy, New Aquitaine, Occitania, Loire, Provence-Alps-Côte d’Azur, as well as the heads of France’s wind federation FEE, its renewables federation SER and the French maritime cluster.

While Macron and his new ecological transition minister Francois de Rugy have positioned themselves as champions of the fight against climate change and opened clear growth perspectives for renewable energies, the announcements regarding offshore wind don’t live up to that, the signatories said.

That could mean that thousands of jobs in a competitive maritime industry could be lost, they add.

Macron on Tuesday had also said four more offshore wind auctions would be held within the next five years, but he didn’t give details about volumes.

Prime Minister Philippe earlier this month had officially launched a long awaited call for tender for the about 500MW Dunkirk zone in the English Channel off the Normandy region, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether that is already one of the four tenders the President was alluding to.

Nor was is clear what will happen to the further build-up of the country’s promising floating wind sector.

After the government has tendered off a combined close to 100MW divided in four pilot arrays, leading floating wind players had called on the French government to set out tenders for 35GW of floating wind alone by 2030 as part of the PPE.

With industry pioneers such as Ideol, Eolfi or Quadran, France after coming too late to the bottom-fixed offshore party is at the forefront of a global floating wind sector.

WindEurope chief executive Giles Dickson also has called France’s offshore ambition as laid out in the PPE disappointing, and stressed that the country could “could comfortably develop up to 11GW by 2030” in fixed-bottom and floating wind combined.