The announcement was made by the French Ministry of Energy Transition on August 2: Océole - the partnership led by Equinor, the world's leading developer of floating wind farms - has been pre-qualified for the tender for the Mediterranean floating wind farms project (AO6).

This project involves the construction of two floating wind farms in the Mediterranean Sea, each with a capacity of around 250 Megawatts, and is one of the first of its kind in the world. The two farms would produce a combined total of around 2.2 TWh of electricity, equivalent to the annual consumption of 950,000 inhabitants, which is more than the population of Toulouse, Montpellier and Nîmes combined. The winner is expected to be chosen in 2023 and the wind farms are expected to be commissioned by 2030.

This pre-qualification of candidates launches of the competitive dialogue phase organised by the Minister in charge of energy, which will notably allow the final specifications to be adapted to the particularities of the projects. Over the next few months, Océole will therefore exchange with the State services with the aim of improving its offer to develop a real territorial project adapted to local issues.

"The first axis of our project development strategy is to evaluate the capacity of the local industrial base, with the aim of locating all or part of the manufacturing and assembly of wind turbines, floats and all other elements as close to the wind farm as possible. The second area we are working on today is the structuring of training: training offshore welders, for example, will take about ten years, so we need to start now!" says Ken Ilacqua, Offshore Manager at Q ENERGY France.

Océole also wishes to call upon local partners to develop cutting-edge know-how. In Brittany, the partnership has chosen to initiate a call for interest in order to identify innovative solutions to improve maritime safety within floating wind farms as well as for co-activities and uses. This approach could be reproduced in the context of the Mediterranean project in the coming months.

"As our partner Q ENERGY France already has teams in Brittany and Pays de la Loire, Equinor chose to set up in the Occitania region in order to be closer to the Mediterranean project. The success of our projects has always been closely linked to their local roots and our commitment to the regions. We remain faithful to our ambition to support the launch of a French floating wind energy industry by sharing our know-how and our experience as a world leader in this field" adds Alexis Darquin, Director of Equinor France.

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