Opponents of a wind farm planned to be installed off the coast of Normandy will gather in front of the D-Day Landing Museum in Arromanches, France, on 8 April for demonstration against the project, claiming it will ruin the landscape of the historic site of Normandy landings from WWII, for which a UNESCO World Heritage classification procedure is under way.
French organisation Fédération Environnement Durable (FED), the Basse-Normandie Environment (BNE) association, the Pulse collective, the Libre Horizon association, and the international NGO European Platform Against Wind Farms (EPAW) have also launched a “No wind turbines off the D-Day beaches” petition, calling for a stop to the project consisting of 75 wind turbines, planned to be set up 10km off Arromanches, as they “will block the horizon and devastate these places of memory.”
EDF EN and Enbridge are developing the 450MW Eoliennes Offshore du Calvados project off the coast of Courseulles-sur-Mer, comprising 75 GE Haliade 6MW wind turbines that will be 175m high. The tender to develop the offshore wind farm, along with two more projects, was won by the EDF EN-led consortium in 2012.
Legal challenges for the Courseulles-sur-Mer were announced last year, when the three EDF EN projects received prefectural approval . In October 2016, eight associations filed an appeal against the prefectural order “authorizing the installation and operation” of the wind farm. The appeal was submitted by regional and national associations for the protection of the environment and heritage to the Court of Nantes.
EDF EN’s 498MW Eoliennes Offshore des Hautes Falaises wind farm project off the coast of Fecamp also saw a legal action against the prefectural decision to authorise the construction and operation of the project, filed by seven environmentalist organisations in August 2016.
Offshore WIND Staff