PERTH-headquartered SSE Renewables has announced that construction is underway on its first project outside of the UK and Ireland.
Civil works have commenced on the 28MW Chaintrix onshore wind farm in the northeast of France, which is the first project from the developer’s southern Europe pipeline acquired last year.
The project, which will see the installation of eight Siemens Gamesa SG 3.4-132 turbines, will be in the Department of Le Marne in the Grand Est region of France. The work is targeting commissioning at the end of 2024.
SSE Renewables is working towards final investment decisions on further projects in southern Europe in the next 12 months, which, combined with Chaintrix, would total around 100MW. The total Southern Europe portfolio amounts to 2.4GW of secured pipeline and c.2.5GW of future prospects.
Finlay McCutcheon, director of onshore renewables Europe at SSE Renewables, said, “Onshore wind power will play an important part in our ambitious growth plans and will be key to achieving the EU’s renewable energy targets and making the EU carbon neutral by 2050.
“Our Southern Europe team has done a fantastic job to develop the Chaintrix project successfully over recent years. This project shows how we are putting our ambition into action in France and, as our first project outside of the UK and Ireland, it will make a small but symbolically important contribution to our target of doubling our operational renewable capacity to over 9GW by March 2027.”
Delphine Henri, country manager France, added, “I am thrilled to see SSE Renewables’ first French project go into construction and we look forward to continuing to closely engage with the surrounding communities and stakeholders. As well as bringing benefits locally, the project will contribute to France meeting its ambitious decarbonisation targets, for which onshore wind will play an important role.”
