Offshore Wind Worldwide 2022 edition - Flipbook - Page 83
Offshore Wind Worldwide 2022
VII. Other
When the first tender procedure was
launched in 2011, the French regulatory
framework and OWF policy was clearly unfit
for a successful implementation of OWF. In
particular: (i) insufficient preliminary
studies had been performed by the public
sector on the concerned projects, leaving
them to be done by the successful bidder
after bid award; and (ii) the permitting
process had not been sufficiently adapted to
match the specifics of OWF projects and
imposed the winning bidder to obtain a
number of various administrative
authorisations, some of them requiring
several years of processing, in particular
insofar as most of them indirectly required
the prior completion of preliminary technical
and impact studies or consultations of the
public before their award. These multiple
authorisations have in turn been challenged
by numerous environmental associations
before several distinct courts. Therefore, a
wide and sparse judicial fight took place for
about 10 years and completely crippled the
projects. This explains to a large extent why
no French OWF (except one small floating
wind installation) has been commissioned at
the day of printing of this document.
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Since then, the situation has considerably
evolved, in a positive sense, and the current
regulatory framework for the OWF has
improved a lot, through several legislative
and regulatory reforms which have brought
substantial legal clarifications and
simplifications. The number of
authorisations needed has significantly
decreased, a significant portion of the
preliminary studies are now undertaken by
the State ahead and before the launch of the
tender procedures, and all litigation
concerning the OWF has been centralised
and unified within the Council of State which
rules at both first and last instance, which
allows to divide by three or four of the
timeframe for settling legal challenges.
Besides, the French government has planned
to launch a series of important public
tenders in the coming months and years to
achieve its higher and higher green energy
ambitions – which it has very recently
considerably heightened by strong
announcements, which will allow for a
steady growth in terms of quantity of
electricity produced by OWF.