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Cherbourg - 317 hectares transferred to support France's Wind & Tidal

By: A. Maillard 10/02/2015 A. Maillard

General Ports Tidal

Marine renewable energy: the official documents for the extension to the port of Cherbourg have been signed!

Today, in the Cherbourg Cercle Naval, Danièle Polvé-Montmasson, Prefect of the Manche Département, Squadron Vice-Admiral Emmanuel Carlier, Maritime Prefect for the English Channel and North Sea, Laurent Beauvais, Chairman of the Ports of Normandy Authority, Michel Roulet, Director of Public Finance for the Manche Département, and Captain Bruno Jeannerod, Commander of the Cherbourg Defence Base, signed the official documents authorising the extension of the port of Cherbourg into the main roadstead as part of the Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) deployment project.

In retrospect, this can be seen as the successful outcome of over two years of work and close cooperation, as the French state, PNA and the Cherbourg Urban District Council strove to bring this major project to fruition, as a vital element in the development of MRE.

Following the ‘Grenelle’ sea initiative, and the French government’s announced intention to renew France’s energy mix, renewable energy has taken off. This objective, now focussing mainly on wind-turbine and tidal turbine energy, is of direct interest to the Lower Normandy region, the Manche département, the Cotentin area and the town of Cherbourg-Octeville.

The port of Cherbourg was thus selected in 2011 by Éolien Maritime France and their exclusive supplier Alstom for the development of their activities. With a plant making blades and towers, and the assembly hub for the Courseulles-sur-Mer wind farm, Cherbourg has already made the most of the land available around the harbour. To complement the extension of the Quai des Flamands in Cherbourg, PNA have therefore decided to increase the area available in the harbour by 39 hectares in order to provide more land by 2016.

The aim of this project is to capture the tidal turbine market, while also possibly taking up some activity in the manufacturing and logistics aspects of the offshore wind turbine industry.

To realise this ambition, two major decisions had to be made:

- gaining permission to carry out the work; the Prefect’s Order was signed on 19 December 2013, with discussions having been conducted in late 2012 and the public inquiry held in mid 2013;

- the ownership of the eastern part of the roadstead was transferred by the State to the Ports of Normandy Authority. The 317 hectares of state maritime land transferred to a local authority constitutes a first in France.

At the same time, the Maritime Prefect and the Manche Prefect updated the regulations applicable to the main roadstead as a whole. This change has no impact for users. All involved are delighted about the licence being signed, as it constitutes an important new step, and one that is necessary to ensure the development of an employment-generating industry. By aligning their projects on manufacturers’ schedules, and by increasing the land dedicated to MRE to 100 ha, Cherbourg, and Lower Normandy in general, are becoming more attractive for this industry of the future.

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Cherbourg - 317 hectares transferred to support France's Wind & Tidal

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