The horizon will take relief off the Bessin.
On Monday February 22, EDF Renouvelables, a subsidiary of EDF, announced the launch of the construction site for the future Courseulles-sur-Mer wind farm.
64 wind turbines will be built in the Channel ten kilometers or more (from 10 to 13 precisely) from the coast, over 45 square kilometers.
The culmination of a project launched in 2007.
The call for tenders was launched in 2012 and won by EDF Renouvelables.
With its partners Enbridge and WPD, the operator has carried out numerous studies and authorization requests.
At the same time, several appeals were filed against the park, finally purged in 2019. The financing - to the tune of two billion euros - completed, the site will begin in March, with the first work on land to prepare the connection to the network.
“We must also build the maintenance station in Ouistreham.
At sea, it will be from 2022. The wind turbines will be installed in 2023-2024 ”, projects EDF Renouvelables.
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Supplied by the imposing devices, the park will have a power of 448 MW, "that is to say the equivalent of the consumption of 630,000 people, that is to say 90% of the population of Calvados", adds the industrialist. .
A data that makes cringe Hervé Texier, president of the Belle Normandie environment federation, who had been the author of the appeal.
“It's not always windy.
This energy production must be put into perspective ”.
And the association manager denounced "the enormous cost of these machines, which risk having an impact on the passage of migratory birds and on marine fauna".
Fishermen on the alert
This last point, the fishermen watch closely.
The park will be located, according to the president of the Regional Fisheries Committee Dimitri Rogoff, "in the middle of the largest deposit of scallops in Europe, which has prospered well for ten years".
At the microphone of France Bleu, the manager confides "concerns and questions, to which we have no answer".
EDF Renouvelables ensures the existence of “in-depth environmental monitoring, carried out by design offices and partners such as universities”.
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Since the start of the project, improvements have taken place, such as the alignment of wind turbines to create fishing lanes and facilitate boat activity.
But the site itself, then the presence of the machines “will generate noise.
Will the fish turn away?
Turn away temporarily or permanently?
We do not yet have any feedback from France on this type of park, ”points out Dimitri Le Goff.
Norman fishermen will have to familiarize themselves with the presence of giant blades since other wind farms will be created off Fécamp (horizon 2023), Dieppe-Le Tréport (2024), while awaiting the development of the project of a fourth park in front of Barfleur (Manche), announced last December.
Off Arromanches, landing place
The Calvadosian site also arouses historical tensions, as it is located a stone's throw from the artificial port of Arromanches, a remarkable site of the Normandy landings.
“We're going to drive wind turbines in a marine cemetery.
It's a lack of respect, ”regrets Hervé Texier.
In connection with associations of veterans, the wind turbines will bear the name of a DDay unit, indicates the industrialist.
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The efforts of EDF Renewables will not prevent opponents "from denouncing, as they go, the side effects of this complex".
By then, the said complex will have risen on the horizon.
Its site will generate around a thousand jobs on earth, according to estimates (including around 750 in the wind turbine manufacturing plant in Le Havre).
For operations, EDF Renouvelables expects 100 long-term jobs.
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