Iberdrola intensifies its commitment to offshore wind power in France

Iberdrola announced this Monday the signing of an alliance with AXA IM Alts, a French company of the AXA Group specialized in alternative investments, to advance its commitment to wind energy in the Gallic country.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
07 November 2022 Monday 23:40
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Iberdrola intensifies its commitment to offshore wind power in France

Iberdrola announced this Monday the signing of an alliance with AXA IM Alts, a French company of the AXA Group specialized in alternative investments, to advance its commitment to wind energy in the Gallic country.

Both companies will jointly participate in the auction that starts on November 10 in France, in search of the award of the development of one of the largest wind farms in the world and the first offshore wind farm carried out by the Gallic country. The future site will be located more than 30 kilometers from the coast of Normandy (English Channel), in an area with very favorable wind conditions and a seabed for this technology, with a capacity of 1,000 MW, as explained Iberdrola in a note.

The French firm, which has 184,000 million euros under management, will participate as a minority shareholder in the project in which Iberdrola will present next week to the French Government, and which is also attended by large global energy companies such as the French EDF or the oil company Shell , projects that the French Government will analyze until the beginning of 2023.

Giving entry to the French financial company, Ibedrola reinforces its commitment to lead the development of offshore wind energy in France, hand in hand with one of the country's largest financial companies.

The company chaired by Ignacio Sánchez Galán is already a world leader in the development of wind energy and is determined to also lead the deployment of offshore wind, with floating wind as one of the technologies that, according to experts, has the greatest projection in the world of renewable energies.

In France alone, Iberdrola has announced an investment of 4,000 million euros until 2025. In 2023, its first large offshore wind farm in the country is expected to come into operation, located in Saint-Brieuc off Brittany with a capacity of 500 MW that will will allow generating energy to satisfy the consumption of 835,000 people.

In addition, Iberdrola has also been pre-qualified for the development of three other offshore wind energy projects, of 250 MW each. Two of them in the Gulf of León, in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, which are expected to be awarded in the fall of 2023 and whose commissioning is scheduled for 2030.

The third project that the company is opting for is the future first floating offshore wind farm in France, to be built about 20 kilometers from Pointe des Poulains, a peninsula located at the northwest end of Belle-Île, in Brittany. The French government plans to designate the winner of the contest next spring, so that it can go into operation in 2030.

The development of floating offshore wind technology is one of the biggest challenges facing the sector. It allows the installation of generation plants further away from the coast, which avoids the visual impact of the current offshore wind farms. This remoteness also gives access to a higher quality wind and therefore to a greater power generation capacity with less investment.

Floating wind technology allows the development of facilities on land and only requires transportation to the final location, compared to the complicated infrastructure necessary to deploy the construction of a wind farm installed on an offshore platform.

In Germany, the group has begun to build its second major offshore wind initiative in the country, after Wikinger. The 476 MW park, called Baltic Eagle, will be able to cover the demand of 475,000 homes and avoid the emission of almost one million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

The company also plans to develop a third marine project in this area: Windanker (300 MW). Together, the three renewable facilities will give rise to the largest offshore wind complex in the Baltic Sea, with a total installed capacity of 1,100 MW and a joint investment of approximately 3,500 million euros.