Seven countries of the European Union – France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg – as well as Norway and the United Kingdom, met on Monday 24 April in Ostend, in Belgium, to seal their common ambition to increase their wind turbine capacity tenfold. These States are committed to collectively increasing their wind energy capacities in the North Sea to 120 gigawatts in 2030, then at least 300 GW in 2050. The objectives are very ambitious. Because for the moment the current cumulative capacities barely reach 30 GW, including 14 GW of offshore wind power supplied by the United Kingdom.
In the statement, France is aiming for at least 2.1 GW by 2030, and “between 4.6 and 17 GW” by 2050 in the North Sea and the English Channel. An acceleration aimed at achieving the objective of 40 GW of offshore wind power on all of the French coasts in 2050, when French offshore capacities currently cap at 0.4 GW. An “achievable” threshold, judge Alexandre Roesch general delegate of the Renewable Energies Union (SER), who pleads for the strengthening of the planning of offshore wind projects in France.
L’Express: The meeting of North Sea States aims to produce 300 gigawatts of offshore electricity by 2050, and in France the objective seems just as ambitious. Is this acceleration possible today?
Alexander Roesh: This commitment of 40 GW of offshore electricity production in 2050 represents approximately fifty farms by 2050. This is a good level of ambition and one that is achievable: the first large farm to have been commissioned, it is that of Saint-Nazaire, it is now connected to the network, but at present three other parks are under construction – Saint Brieuc, Fécamp, and Courseulles. In all, the multiannual energy program provides for 10 gigawatts by 2028, which means that around a quarter of the objective is already in the pipeline.
Offshore wind turbines in France
© / The Express
For the remaining 30 gigawatts, it is believed that European industry can follow. In Europe, twelve sites produce components for wind turbines, such as blades or nacelles, and four of these sites are in France. There are two factories in Cherbourg, and one in Saint-Nazaire as well as in Le Havre. This is our paradox: we have quite a few capacities connected to the network, but on the industrial level we have the factories to increase our production because in the calls for tenders, criteria have favored local establishments.
The challenge now, to successfully maintain the acceleration trajectory in France, is first of all that of planning the maritime space. When we look at what happened in neighboring countries, our Belgian friends, the Dutch or even the Germans, have already made extensive use of maritime areas. There are military activities, the aggregates industry, obviously fishing, and despite all these activities, to give visibility to all sea users, they were much faster on the mapping exercises. In Germany, this was done in 18 months… This is the next step we are taking to succeed in the acceleration: provide jointly on our four seafronts a planning of the areas where these future parks could be installed.
The United Kingdom already has 14 GW of offshore wind power and Germany 8 GW, in France we only produce about 0.5 while we have the second largest wind resource in Europe. What can explain our delay in offshore wind power in recent years?
There are several explanatory factors, the first is that we started later. The British, who are the leaders in offshore production, started much earlier and never stopped. That is to say that they held calls for tenders on a regular basis, which made it possible to give visibility and thus to structure the sector. We allocated the first parks in 2012 and 2014 and then we stopped everything for five years…
The second element of explanation is that we had a very complex legal and regulatory framework with a multitude of parallel authorisations, and this provided an opportunity for opponents of the projects to attack them from several angles, which slowed down the process enormously. Since August 2018, this has evolved through a reform of the development framework. We were inspired by what was being done elsewhere; today we have a permit that groups together the various elements under a single authorization. These authorizations are, moreover, called “variable”: as the technology evolves quickly, and the machines are no longer the same as ten years ago, it is possible to submit a request for a permit taking into account a possible evolution of machine performance. It is therefore an important reform, which makes it possible to have a more modern framework and which should shorten development times.
Could technological developments in turbines help us achieve this goal?
Yes, technological acceleration can help us solve this equation. Today, we have increasingly large machines, which have a power contained between 12 and 15 megawatts, which we did not have a few years ago. And we are starting to see on the market, and in the plans of equipment manufacturers, machines of 20 megawatts or even above. This makes it possible to install fewer machines, and therefore to have better acceptability, because even if they are larger and therefore more visible, they will also tend to be further from the coast, which will reduce their impact on the landscape. The next four Normandy parks will be located 32 kilometers from the coast, for example.
Acceptability remains one of the major obstacles to projects…
Acceptability is a subject for all sectors of the energy transition, but it is true that recently wind power has become much politicized in the debate, and in particular onshore wind power, which obviously attracts all sorts of discussions that are sometimes a bit off the mark. The impact on the landscape – which remains a subjective criterion – is often mentioned, but that is why we must clearly understand the energy emergency in which we find ourselves, because we will have all the more difficulty to accept a change in the landscape if we are convinced that we can do without wind turbines. However, we do not have enough production capacity to balance future demand. There is, beyond the climate emergency, an energy emergency. This is why we need these volumes of electricity production, and there is a very strong need for information on this subject.
When you look at things in detail, in simulations and in reality, you understand that you have to accelerate on absolutely all the levers. First on energy sobriety, but also on nuclear and renewable energy. We reduced our electricity consumption by 10% last winter because we were all scared, but to meet our objectives by 2050, the effort will be much greater since we will have to reach 40% reduction in consumption.
Isn’t there also a risk of tension on the industrial sector in terms of the supply of certain materials, or of bottlenecks in the order books?
Of course, given the acceleration envisaged by these countries of the North Sea, there are challenges of increasing the load of the industrial sector, and this on all the links of the chain. Even, for example, on the boats needed to build these parks. It is important to give visibility if we want French or European shipowners to invest. There is a chicken and egg paradox that is well known in the industrial sector: who should invest first? This is also true for the electrical networks and the port infrastructures, since there too the work will have to be massive and we can see it in Brest, in Port-la-Nouvelle, where there have been these investments. This long-term objective is a prerequisite for triggering industrial investments. But we have capacities: the largest wind turbine blades in the world are built in the LM Wind factory which is located in Cherbourg, and it is a site which exports to the United States and the United Kingdom, but that does not will not last forever, which is why it is important today to have this visibility also for the European market.
Is the regulatory development concerning authorizations and the simplification of procedures in line with this ambition?
The permit application and issuance process is now quite up to scratch, it’s a never-ending exercise, but we’ve made good progress. To really succeed, however, it is necessary to go through planning, it is the priority of this year to be able to have these public debates on the different maritime facades. It is important to have a dialogue as soon as possible with the fishermen, with the departments and local elected officials, to make this energy ambition understood. And this is a point on which we are behind our neighbors.
Is there a fear of seeing the winds in the North Sea drop in the coming years, as has sometimes been said?
This is something you see on social networks, so we went directly to interview Virginie Schwarz, the president and CEO of Météo France. For the moment, there is no solid scientific documentation to establish a real drop in winds in the North Sea. Climate change will first impact the energy sector due to the lower availability of water, and in my opinion, we will first have problems on this subject before having anticyclonic changes in the winds in the region.
But it is interesting to look at this problem on the scale of the whole territory. We have the North Sea, but we also have three other seaboards, and the wind patterns in the Mediterranean are not at all the same as in the North Sea or the South Atlantic. This is why it is important to seek out this “proliferation”, as it is called, so as not to have a production capacity that would be exposed to the same climatic conditions everywhere.
And then the important thing is the interconnection. It no longer makes sense to talk about energy transition at the Franco-French level, as we saw this winter: we imported electricity from Germany and exported gas to them. One of the main elements for succeeding in this challenge of 300 Gigawatts of offshore electricity in Europe will be this capacity for cross-border electricity exchanges, because this is also what will make it possible to respond to the variability of the system.
Should we also review calls for tenders, to promote major projects?
Historically, we have built parks of around 0.5 gigawatts, each time with a permit procedure, a public debate… We think that this planning exercise is also an opportunity to have calls for tenders larger, perhaps even as the UK is doing, with very large tenders, for example 10 gigawatts, which could be awarded by 2026. This would send a very strong signal strong in the market, and this is also important for the RTE network. If we do this planning exercise, it will also make it possible to increase the size of calls for tenders and move towards a much more industrialized logic in terms of allocation. This does not mean that all these production capacities will go to the same company, we can have allotment clauses, it simply allows us to have industrial visibility.