Belle-Île: offshore wind turbine project abandoned due to rising costs

 

There will be no offshore wind turbines off Groix and Belle-Île-en-Mer (Morbihan). Shell, which, with two partners, was to install a pilot site there, has decided to abandon its project, due to rising costs and "technical, commercial and financial challenges", announced this Tuesday the consortium, confirminginformation from Les Échos.

 

This €300 million project was led by a consortium bringing together Shell, with Banque des territoires (Caisse des Dépôts) and China's CGN. It was to test three floating wind turbines, a technology seenas the future of offshore wind power, because it allows parks to be installed deeper, especially further from the coast, than wind turbines riveted in the seafloor.

 

The Breton project "has faced several technical, commercial and financial challenges, all in a context of constantly increasing costs and very strong constraints, in terms of inflation and supply chain," the consortium said in a statement on Tuesday. "The economic conditions related to the project have been significantly modified, calling into question the economic viability of the project for all consortium partners," he added.

 

 

The project has in particular come up against the withdrawal of General Electric, which was to supply the six-megawatt (MW) wind turbines but has refocused on the manufacture of equipment now more powerful, then the manufacturer of floats Naval Group, which has sold its activity in floating wind, detailed the article of the Echoes, whose content Shell has confirmed.

 

Combined with the widespread rise in costs andthe energy crisis, this no longer made it possible to build a sustainable economic model.

 

Shell took over the project in 2019 by acquiring Eolfi, a former Veolia subsidiary and pioneer of floating wind power. The France, which is due to inaugurate in a few days itsvery first wind farm (80 wind turbines installed on the bottom) facing Saint-Nazaire, is counting on floating technology to meet its ambitions: some 40 gigawatts (about 50 farms) by 2050.