“Small streams make big rivers,” said Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The rebellious leader is not a Don Quixote at war with windmills. On the contrary: he would like to see “thousands more” of them in the country. “I often talk about mills. Their modern name is ‘hydro turbines’. It doesn’t matter. The energy drawn from the power of water remains unlimited energy,” he wrote. on his blog in 2021. Speeches, debates, interviews… The three-time presidential candidate has, in recent years, continued to defend marine renewable energies, and particularly tidal turbines, submerged wind turbines that use ocean currents to produce electricity. It is therefore not surprising to see them written down in black and white in the New Popular Front program : “Making France the European leader in marine energy with offshore wind and the development of hydroelectric energy.”
In this period of instability and coalitions emerging in the National Assembly, the issues that bring political parties together are struggling to emerge clearly. Hydroelectricity can congratulate itself on being one of them. In addition to La France Insoumise, and the left as a whole, the sector has regained the confidence of the government, which mentions it – this is a first – in its National Integrated Energy-Climate Plan (Pniec)finally transmitted at the beginning of July to the European Commission. The Liot group (Liberties, Independents, Overseas and Territories) in the Assembly and the Republicans (LR) in the Senate have also, in several recent pre-dissolution works, supported its deployment.
“It has become transpartisan,” appreciates Guillaume Gréau, the development director of HydroQuest, which is leading one of the main French projects. Only the National Rally, historically against wind energy, opposes it. “Underwater stuff? For me, that’s worthless,” RN MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy told AFP.
The coming and going of the State
Not enough to dampen the spirits of a sector that has come a long way. From a near-crash in 2018. At the time, Naval Group, a key player in the sector and majority-owned by the French state, decided to cut its investments in tidal power due to “the lack of commercial prospects”. At the same time, a report from the French Environment and Energy Management Agency expressed strong reservations about its development. “It hurt us a lot,” recalls Marc Lafosse, from the Renewable Energy Union (SER). “We interpreted it as a message asking the state to stop tidal power. We had to do a lot of work to reassure everyone, especially the government.” In this wilderness crossing, salvation came… from Europe. In particular, the €48.4 million allocated to the Tiger project, launched in 2019 and aimed at stimulating the energy growth of marine tidal power in France and the United Kingdom.
This funding has enabled research and development to continue on both sides of the Channel. Thanks to two years of testing between 2019 and 2021 in Brittany, “we were able to show government departments that our technology worked,” recalls Guillaume Gréau of HydroQuest. The company is leading, along with Qair and CMN Naval, the most advanced project in the country. Named FloWatt, it received nearly €65 million in 2023 from a government that was finally ready to “take up the battle for tidal power again” – a promise made by Emmanuel Macron. The trough has passed. Administrative authorisations were issued at the end of last year for the Raz Blanchard site (Channel), between the Pointe de la Hague and the Channel Island of Alderney, a passage where one of the most powerful tidal currents in Europe circulates. HydroQuest is now waiting for validation by the European Commission of the electricity feed-in tariff by the end of 2024, before construction of the seven turbines begins, scheduled for next year. The commissioning of the park, with a capacity of 17 megawatts (MW), is expected in 2027. The same horizon for Normandie Hydroliennes, another 12 MW pilot project at Raz Blanchard.
3D visual of HydroQuest’s future FloWatt farm.
© / HydroQuest
PPE and calls for tender
In the race for marine currents, the years of waiting in France have allowed the United Kingdom, which certainly has greater potential (10 GW compared to 5 for France), to take a few steps ahead. Several commercial calls for tender have already been launched there. “We are also ready to take this step,” assures Marlène Kiersnowski, director of tidal turbine sites at the OPEN-C Foundation. She is calling for quantified objectives set in stone for the next multi-year energy programme (PPE), a text that has been postponed many times, as well as initial calls for tender. “This is necessary to keep the people who believe in it and the investments,” insists Marc Lafosse. The Breton company Sabella, which operated a tidal turbine in Ouessant (Finistère), the first to have injected electricity into the network, has paid the price. It was liquidated last January due to a lack of a profitable model. “The collateral damage of a PPE that should have come out a year and a half ago,” regrets the president of the SER marine energy commission.
Tidal power, a predictable energy source that is rather well accepted by the population because it is invisible, still lacks “major projects to guarantee competitiveness”, analyses Damien Callet, economic research officer at Xerfi. “From 200 to 300 euros per MWh currently for a pilot farm project, the price will drop below 100 euros per MWh once the first gigawatt is installed in the water. We will then get closer to wind power and interesting commercial prospects”, explains Marlène Kiersnowski. The various players in the sector also praise the prospect of a 100% French value chain, and the use of existing technologies, allowing costs to be further reduced. Like the electrical substations connecting future tidal turbines to land, the same as for offshore wind power.
Designated “blue champion” by the European Investment Bank last May, HydroQuest “is starting to be approached by foreign energy companies, which is often a good sign,” agrees Guillaume Gréau. While tidal power will remain, in terms of resources, a small stream of electricity production, it is ready to earn its place in the great river of transition in France, and in the world.
.