A consortium comprising Corio Generation, Qair and TotalEnergies has been pre-selected by the French Directorate General for Energy and Climate to participate in a competitive tender to develop two floating windfarms in the Mediterranean Sea.
The two projects of about 250MW each could supply enough clean energy to meet the annual electricity consumption of almost a million people, according to the French government, and help achieve France’s objective of 40GW of offshore wind capacity by 2050.
The consortium will leverage each company’s technical expertise, strong financial capacity and extensive experience in the offshore wind sector.
Corio Generation, an offshore wind business owned by Macquarie’s Green Investment Group, is a global specialist offshore wind developer with over 20GW of capacity under development worldwide, including 2.5GW in floating wind.
Qair, a European renewable energy producer, is a French pioneer in floating wind energy. With more than 30 years’ experience and a strong local presence in France, the renewable energy specialist operates 1 GW of assets and is developing a pipeline of 20 GW.
Multi-energy company TotalEnergies, has expertise in offshore operations and maintenance through its historical activities. TotalEnergies is already developing offshore wind projects with a combined capacity of more than 11GW, including more than 2GW of floating projects in France, the UK and South Korea.
Jonathan Cole, CEO of Corio Generation said: “With its deep waters and industrial heritage, the Mediterranean is fantastically placed to benefit from floating wind technology, creating significant job and investment opportunities.
”Deploying new projects at scale will be critical to realising the full potential of France’s wind resources and unlocking a significant clean, reliable and affordable source of electricity for generations to come.”
Jérôme Billerey, France managing director at Qair said: “We are happy to bring once again our partners TotalEnergies and Corio together around complementary expertise in the development, financing and construction of offshore wind projects.
”In association with the Mediterranean territories, we will be keen to participate in the acceleration of the energy transition by developing locally the French floating offshore wind industry to come.”
Olivier Terneaud, VP offshore wind at TotalEnergies said: “After our South Britanny tender, we are delighted to renew our partnership with Qair and Corio to contribute to the development of floating wind in the Mediterranean and thus to the energy transition in France.
”If successful, we intend to mobilise our collective expertise to provide the best solutions to meet the technical, commercial and societal challenges of the project.”
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