Global Offset Experts: France unveils plans to build $14 billion offshore wind project.

Jan. 27, 2011 - PRLog -- Global Offset Experts has learned that France is soon to construct its first offshore wind farm at a cost of ten billion euro. Currently France produces about 74% of its electricity from nuclear power stations. The new project will consist of 600 offshore wind turbines with a total capacity of 3,000 megawatts and is to be constructed in the western regions of Loire-Atlantique, Brittany and Normandy.

"We are launching this first tender covering five development areas for offshore wind power in order to give the industry's players greater visibility,” the French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters.

The tender had been delayed, initially expected in September, and led to anxiety among industrial firms which indicated that they needed a commitment from government before they built the facilities to manufacture wind power turbines.

Global Offset Experts was informed that while there are numerous offshore wind turbine manufacturers in Europe including Germany’s Siemens and Denmark’s wind energy giant Vestas, there are currently none in France where capacity is at present nonexistent.

"We have all the assets to build an industrial sector and even to become the leader in offshore wind power," Global Offset Experts believes France's Ecology Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet was quoted as saying.

The new project, one of the globe’s biggest with a power generation capacity equal to that of three small nuclear reactors, is expected to create 10,000 jobs according to Sarkozy, who added that candidates would be selected in early 2012.

France hopes to build wind power capacity of 25,000 MW by 2020 at a cost of €20 billion in order to meet its target of sourcing 23% of its total energy needs from renewable energy. Currently, Global Offset Experts data shows, wind power represents less than 2% of the country’s output capacity, compared with 7 % in Germany.

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