Corio and Qair selected as candidates to participate in French offshore wind tenders

The consortium is selected as a candidate for the two calls for tenders launched in parallel in December 2022, for two projects, one off the Ile d’Oléron, France (AO7), for a capacity of approximately 1000 MW, and the other off Normandy, France (AO8), for a capacity of approximately 1500 MW.

Corio and Qair are now, as part of a consortium, qualified candidates for four tenders in total. The Energies du Méridien consortium aims to accelerate the development of the French offshore and maritime wind industries, by developing innovative wind farms and investing in local infrastructure and supply chain, in order to support the French objective carbon neutrality by 2050 while creating opportunities for local communities.

Mark Giulianotti, Europe Director of Corio Generation, declared: “We are proud to have been selected by the French government to participate in these two offshore wind tenders. The Energies du Méridien team combines Corio’s unrivalled global offshore wind expertise and access to capital with Qair’s long history of renewable energy development as well as its historic French roots. Together, we have world-class capabilities to enable France to take full advantage of the green industrial revolution and deploy next-generation offshore wind at scale.”

Guirec Dufour, Managing Director of Qair France, stated for his part: “We are delighted to collaborate again with Corio Generation for these two calls for tenders. This association continues to testify to the complementarity of our skills and our common commitment to the energy transition in France. This pre-selection confirms the offshore strategy of the Qair group initiated in 2016 around our Eolmed pilot project and already recognised in its commercial deployment with the allocation of 2 GW in Scotland. We are convinced that the competitive offer of Energies du Méridien that we carry will be able to bring a new robust brick to the nascent edifice of a French industrial subsidiary of offshore wind power.”

Energies du Méridien is the second consortium formed by the two groups to participate in French offshore wind tenders. Corio and Qair have already joined forces with TotalEnergies for the creation of the AEM consortium, selected to participate in the two current tenders for the development, construction, and operation of floating offshore wind farms in southern Brittany and Mediterranean, AO5 and AO6.

This means that both Corio and Qair are part of a consortia that qualified for four separate offshore wind tenders in France.

In its announcement of 27 March 2023, the French government confirmed that the awarding of the two offshore wind projects for AO7 and AO8 will take place in early 2024, with commissioning scheduled for 2032.

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