This is a first in France! An offshore wind turbine has been installed in the Saint-Nazaire (Pays de la Loire) offshore park, 12 kilometers off the coast. Commissioning will begin in early May, AFP noted on Tuesday, April 12. Ultimately, this offshore park will have 80 offshore wind turbines, all of which should be installed by the end of 2022, the news agency reported. Sustainable information†
The installation of the offshore wind turbine will take several months. The foundation was laid last September, the mast on Thursday 7 April. As for the blades of the wind turbine, two of them were hung from the mast at walking pace. The third and last should be in the week. It could not be hung like the others due to bad weather conditions, AFP specifies.
“It’s a lot of emotion and joy for the whole team, it’s a project we’ve been working on for ten years.”
Cédric Le Bousse, Director of Marine Renewable Energy France at EDF
The director of Marine Renewable Energy France at EDF, Cédric Le Brousse, specifies that each wind turbine has a capacity of six megawatts, “compared to three to four for a wind turbine on land”† The entire set of the park will, according to the director, produce the equivalent of the electricity consumption of 700,000 people, or half of the population of the Loire-Atlantique department.
Projects that are not unanimous
In France, other offshore wind farm projects will see the light of day in Fécamp (in Seine-Maritime), Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d’Armor) and Courseulles-sur-Mer (Calvados) in the coming months and years. With sometimes a lukewarm, even hostile reception from locals or NGOs, such as Sea Shepherd.
The organization that specializes in protecting marine ecosystems and biodiversity is strongly opposed to the use of these wind farms. In a press release published on its website in February 2022, Sea Shepherd said of the Saint-Brieuc wind farm project: “The goal of developing renewable energy sources cannot take precedence over the protection of life, whatever our political views and our personal commitments. (…) Reality has to be faced: the wind project in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc has been in an ecological deadlock from the start. †