PARIS (Reuters) – France will launch tenders in coming months for two fixed and three floating wind farms totalling 9.2 gigawatts (GW), the energy ministry said in a decision published on Friday.
The projects will be built off the coast of Fecamp, northwest France, as well as in waters off Brittany, the western Gascogne Gulf and the southern Mediterranean coast.
The new installations are part of national plans to have 45 GW by 2050, energy minister Olga Givernet told reporters during a visit to Fecamp.
“This is a signal for the industrial value chain, to tell them it’s not the moment to de-localise, it’s not the moment to draw up layoff plans — it’s on this land that we need to build the wind turbines and then install them,” Givernet said.
Earlier this year French daily Les Echos reported that General Electric planned to halve the workforce at its wind turbine factory in Saint-Nazaire.
The company could not be immediately reached for comment.
(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel and America Hernandez; editing by David Evans and Tomasz Janowski)
