French utility company Engie and renewables developer Neoen are making plans to invest around €1 billion to construct a 1 GW solar-powered low carbon energy park, which is set to comfortably break records for the largest solar project in Europe.
Solar. Credit: Engie
Credit: Engie
To be based in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of western France, the Horizeo project will also incorporate the production of green hydrogen which will supply transport and energy needs.
The park will also incorporate a data centre, which will use power generated onsite.
Engie said that any remaining energy not used by the park or data centre will be sold via power purchase agreements (PPAs) and that it had no plans to use the French government's renewable tendering programmes.
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“This is a real break with the current economic model of renewable energies in France,” said Gwenaëlle Avice-Huet, deputy CEO of Engie's renewables division, in a statement.
“We are also committed to carrying out an exemplary project in terms of environmental and societal approach. The upcoming public debate will allow us, in particular, to enrich and feed all the components of the project."
Part of the solar array will be used for agricultural purposes and any land cleared in the heavily forested region for the 1,000-hectare project will be offset, with interest, by tree planting elsewhere.
When complete, Horizeo will join similar sites in Qatar and UAE as a member of the 1 Gigawatt Club. India and Egypt also have gigawatt-scale solar parks which house several projects.
With government subsidies for solar declining, park sizes are trending upwards. Completed in 2015, Neoen's Cestas project, also in France, has a 300 MW capacity, which almost tripled the size of the country's largest solar park at the time. The largest solar park in Germany is 187 MW.
In Spain, a raft of much larger sites have popped up, despite a lack of subsidies. Iberdrola's 500 MW Núñez de Balboa project was completed around a year ago and the utility company is in the early stages of constructing the 590 MW Francisco Pizarro project.
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Like most utility companies in Europe, Engie is in the process of shifting its focus towards renewables. Last year the company announced an increase to its annual renewable deployment target from 3 GW per year to 4 GW.
To pay for the acceleration, the company said in a statement that it would look at "consider opportunities to divest non-core businesses and minority stakes in order to increase financial flexibility to fund investments in renewables and infrastructure assets."
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