France vows to learn from offshore wind experience as historic floating auction looms

Back in January 2011, France’s then-president Nicolas Sarkozy announced a 3GW offshore wind tender as part of plans to install 6GW off the country’s lengthy coasts by 2020. Ten years on, only one wind turbine — the floating 2MW FloatGen pilot — is turning in French waters.

With gigawatts of bottom-fixed projects still bogged down in regulatory limbo, floating wind is looking evermore important to France and indeed Paris is pushing ahead with plans to make the country a world leader in rapidly emerging sector, vowing not to repeat the mistakes it made with its initial offshore tenders in 2012 and 2014.