Evolution of wind energy pricing policies in France: Opportunities and new challenges

Abstract

The wind energy market is in continuous development since the last decade. This market accounts more than 600 GW of installed wind turbines in 2018, with 14 GW of onshore wind turbines installed in France. With the new Act of 17 August 2015 on energy transition for green growth, France committed fully to energy transformation, with an objective of national renewable energy share of 35% in 2030. Thus, incentives and many provisions were applied to enhance public and private investments in mature renewable energy sources. Within these energy sources, the wind energy market gets a new twist in pricing policies and new actors have emerged. The purpose of this paper is to describe the current state of art of pricing policies and describe the role of the industry’s recent actors (wind farm managers and manufacturers, aggregators, CRE…). These policies are then discussed to outline their opportunities and challenges in the French wind energy market.