Hogan Lovell OffshoreBook 2023 230809 OnlinePDF - Flipbook - Page 89
Offshore Wind Worldwide 2023
(c) respect for the marine environment and
existing activities (20%).
Secondly, the competitive dialogue is a
smoother, more flexible procedure under
which the candidates participate in the establishment of the specifications drafted by
the Minister in charge of energy. More specifically, the Minister elaborates a first draft
of Intention to Tender ("ITT") - containing
the main information such as the purpose
of the competitive dialogue, the calendar of
the procedure, the expected technical and
financial capacities of the candidates, the
award criteria - and submits it to the CRE.
The government thereafter publishes a call
for competition in the Official Journal of
the European Union. Then, it prequalifies
candidates that will be able to participate
in the dialogue itself on the basis of their
technical and financial capacities. The Minister in charge of energy discusses with the
prequalified candidates in order to define
or develop solutions to meet its needs and
prepare the detailed tender specifications.
Candidates are invited to submit their bids
on the final version of specifications drafted
by the Minister, which contains detailed
information, including the detailed award
criteria. After the offers have been analysed
by the CRE, the Minister in charge of energy
selects the winning bidder(s) on the basis of
these criteria.16
This procedure aims to reduce costs and
secure the projects, because the dialogue
should help the candidates to adapt their
16 Article R.311-25-1 and following of the Energy Code.
17 Article L.311-10-1 of the Energy Code.
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proposals, and the studies made upstream
for the award of the projects help them to
take into account environmental risks with a
higher degree of accuracy than before.
A competitive dialogue has also been used
to award in early 2019 the Dunkirk OWF
project (third set of French OWF projects),
launched in 2016. In this tender, the evaluation criteria were electricity purchase price
and strength of the financial plan (80%)
and inclusion of environmental stakes and
optimisation of the area (20%).
Since 2017, the law expressly states that the
price criterion’s weight in public tenders
(classic calls for tender as well as competitive dialogues) has to represent more than
half of the whole criteria’s weight.17
For example, the documents of the competitive dialogue of the fourth round (attribution of 1 GW in Normandy), state that the
criteria are, in this order:
(a) the economic and financial value of the
offer, including the proposed price;
(b) the inclusion of the environmental issues; and
(c) the inclusion of the social and territorial
development issues.
