Sian Crampsie
Developers behind a pilot floating wind farm off the coast of France have successfully raised €1 million in an online crowdfunding campaign.
The Eoliennes Flottantes du Golfe du Lion (EFGL) project partners launched the participatory campaign in October last year on the Enerfip crowdfunding platform.
The campaign hit its €1 million target within 2 hours of being opened nationwide, with 850 subscribers in total, EFGL said. Some €600 000 was sourced from the Occitanie region local to the project site.
The sums invested will be used as a loan to finance the second offshore wind measurement campaign currently underway and which should be completed in early summer 2020.
EFGL is planning to install three 10 MW floating wind turbines more than 16 km from the Languedoc and Roussillon coast. It is backed by Engie, EDPR and RTE, and will use Principle Power’s WindFloat platform technology and MHI Vestas turbine technology.
The wind farm is due to start operating in late 2022.
