The European Commission has rubber-stamped French plans to support four floating wind demonstration projects in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, clearing the way for arrays that are deemed to be make-or-break for the nascent sector.

The pilots – Eolfi/China General Nuclear's Groix Belle Ile in the Atlantic Ocean, Engie and EDPR's Leucate, Quandran's Eolmed and EDF EN's Provence Grand Large in the Mediterranean – are set to receive both “investment and operating aid” from Brussels as a “new type of offshore wind energy [with] the potential growth of a novel renewable energy technology”.

The French demonstrators, each 24MW and made up of three to four turbines, are seen as key to the sector’s industrialisation as each project will use a different floating foundation concept, a set-up designed to create a micro-market to commercialise best-in-class technology as fast as possible, while building up a sector-specific supply chain.

The four projects, which will use platforms from Ideol, Principle Power, SBM and DCNS, are expected to be online by 2021 at a feed-in tariff of €240/MWh ($272/MWh) for 20 years, with construction of first floating foundations already underway in Europe.

“Each of the four demonstration wind farms will use a particular combination of turbine, floater and cables,” the Commission said in a statement. “The objective of the public support is to test these different technological solutions, with the long-term goal to test this technology before deploying it on a larger scale.”

Despite a leadership position in floating wind, with a first demonstrator in the water, France has fallen behind on ambitions to move the sector to a first commercial tender in 2018.

Targets in the government’s most recent ten-year energy plan for floating wind build-out we called “minimal” by industry body FEE, with the sector lobbying for 5GW to be built in France by 2030, a much higher capacity than the maximum 1.25GW suggested to be tendered off by 2024 in the government draft.

Latest calculations from wind industry advocacy body WindEurope figure some 350MW of floating wind capacity will be switched on in Europe by 2021 via a raft of projects off the UK, France, Portugal and Norway.

From a single industrial-scale prototype in 2009, floating wind has progressed at a clip toward commercialisation. Many analyst forecasts, including those of UK low-carbon business development body Carbon Trust, point to a fleet as large as 15GW by 2030.

Wind

EU clears way for French flagship floating wind arrays