France recently published the results of its 250MW floating offshore wind auction off South Brittany (AO5), scoring a record-low price for floating offshore wind at €86/MWh and well below the €140/MWh ceiling price.

WindEurope is warning governments that this should not be taken as a new benchmark figure though, as this is a relatively young industry with technical and commercial risks that are still high. As of now Europe has 208MW of floating wind in operation, spread mostly across four small wind farms and the organisation believes that it is too early to tell what the price range for large scale floating wind is going to be in Europe.

“Governments must consider the specifics of this particular auction when defining their auction budgets and ceiling prices. Don’t take the €86/MWh bid price as a benchmark. Otherwise you might find yourself in a similar situation to the UK last year. The UK’s 2023 offshore wind auction had a low ceiling price because they made the wrong assumptions about costs – and nobody bid,” said Giles Dickson, CEO WindEurope.

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