For the First Time juwi Sells Wind Park to French Utility

What has proved worthwhile for juwi in their home market Germany is currently being executed in France: Here, the globally-operating juwi group is cooperating with a municipal utility for the first time. The foundation for the cooperation was laid by the French subsidiary juwi EnR. It is currently building a ten megawatt wind park in Lorraine for the UEM group. With 160,000 customers in Metz and the surrounding communities UEM is one of the biggest utilities in France.

In Allondrelle-la-Malmaison, next to the borders with Luxembourg and Belgium, juwi EnR is currently building its tenth wind farm in France. After being fully operational in late autumn, the five Vestas V100 wind turbines will produce around 26 million kilowatt hours of eco-friendly electricity annually. This equals the consumption of 7,500 local households, or one tenth of the City of Metz. Over the period of twenty years, the wind park safes some 155,000 tons of the climate-damaging greenhouse gas carbon dioxide compared to the same energy output produced by conventional power plants. In comparison: For producing 26 million kilowatt hours of electricity in a nuclear power plant, 2.7 tons of radioactive uranium would have to be enriched. This would produce 6.9 tons of nuclear waste.
The road from the first plans to the actual beginning of the construction works was a long and winding one as in France, just like in Germany, the regulations concerning wind power have been changed and adjusted repeatedly. For the realization of renewable energy projects, that need to be embedded in a stable and reliable political framework, these adjustments in irregular intervals do have negative effects as projects need to be reevaluated and redesigned continuously. Already in 2004, juwi started planning the wind park in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department. “The political framework for renewable energies has been changed several times,” Nicolas Pagès, juwi EnR’s Managing Director, says. “The new draft by the French government for an energy transition law is a first step in the right direction. We now need a detailed plan on how to achieve the target of 40 percent renewable energy in the electricity mix of 2030.”
For the first time, the juwi group collaborates with a French utility: The UEM group already bought the wind park. For the company it is the very first investment in wind energy. Prospectively, UEM is planning to expand its investments in renewable energies and thus contribute further to the French energy transition.