France has the third largest wind resource in Europe after Germany and the United Kingdom. Électricité de France

Électricité de France

Électricité de France S.A. is the second largest French utility company. Headquartered in Paris, France, with €65.2 billion in revenues in 2010, EDF operates a diverse portfolio of 120,000+ megawatts of generation capacity in Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.EDF is one of...

, the main French electricity generator and supplier in France plans to increase its capacity to 10 GW in the year 2010.

The French government plans to produce 21% of its electricity consumption with renewable energy

Renewable energy

Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...

 in 2010 to comply with European directive 2001/77/CE of 27 September 2001. This means that France has to produce 106 TWh of renewable energy in 2010 when it only produced 71 TWh in 2006. Wind power represents 75% of the 35 TWh additional production in 2010.

Total installed capacity early 2010 (9/1/2010, other updates see link 2) : 4.521 MW

Wind power capacity in France

Region	28 August 2006 (MW)	1 September 2007 (MW)
Centre	244	315
Languedoc-Roussillon Languedoc-Roussillon Languedoc-Roussillon is one of the 27 regions of France. It comprises five departments, and borders the other French regions of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Rhône-Alpes, Auvergne, Midi-Pyrénées on the one side, and Spain, Andorra and the Mediterranean sea on the other side.-Geography:The region is...	215	281
Brittany	168	254
Lorraine Lorraine (région) Lorraine is one of the 27 régions of France. The administrative region has two cities of equal importance, Metz and Nancy. Metz is considered to be the official capital since that is where the regional parliament is situated...	100	208
Picardy	86	193
Champagne-Ardenne Champagne-Ardenne Champagne-Ardenne is one of the 27 regions of France. It is located in the northeast of the country, bordering Belgium, and consists of four departments: Aube, Ardennes, Haute-Marne, and Marne. The region is famous for its sparkling white wine . Its rivers, most of which flow west, include the...	102	157
Pays de la Loire Pays de la Loire Pays de la Loire is one of the 27 regions of France. It is one of the regions created in the late 20th century to serve as a zone of influence for its capital, Nantes, one of a handful so-called "balancing metropolises" ¹...	46	104
Rhône-Alpes Rhône-Alpes Rhône-Alpes is one of the 27 regions of France, located on the eastern border of the country, towards the south. The region was named after the Rhône River and the Alps mountain range. Its capital, Lyon, is the second-largest metropolitan area in France after Paris...	90	103
Auvergne Auvergne (région) Auvergne is one of the 27 administrative regions of France. It comprises the 4 departments of Allier, Puy de Dome, Cantal and Haute Loire.The current administrative region of Auvergne is larger than the historical province of Auvergne, and includes provinces and areas that historically were not...	39	92
Nord-Pas de Calais Nord-Pas de Calais Nord-Pas de Calais , Nord for short, is one of the 27 regions of France. It consists of the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais, in the north and has a border with Belgium. Most of the region was once part of the Southern Netherlands, within the Low Countries, and gradually became part of France...	72	87
Midi-Pyrénées Midi-Pyrénées Midi-Pyrénées is the largest region of metropolitan France by area, larger than the Netherlands or Denmark.Midi-Pyrénées has no historical or geographical unity...	33	83
Overseas department	27
Territoire d'outre-mer	24
Lower Normandy	26	50
Upper Normandy	16	36
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur or PACA is one of the 27 regions of France.It is made up of:* the former French province of Provence* the former papal territory of Avignon, known as Comtat Venaissin...	29	31
Poitou-Charentes Poitou-Charentes Poitou-Charentes is an administrative region in central western France comprising four departments: Charente, Charente-Maritime, Deux-Sèvres and Vienne. The regional capital is Poitiers.-Politics:The regional council is composed of 56 members...	12	21
Corsica Corsica Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....	18	18
Limousin Limousin (région) Limousin is one of the 27 regions of France. It is composed of three départements: Corrèze, Creuse and the Haute-Vienne.Situated largely in the Massif Central, as of January 1st 2008, the Limousin comprised 740,743 inhabitants on nearly 17 000 km2, making it the second least populated region of...	9	9
Aquitaine Aquitaine Aquitaine , archaic Guyenne/Guienne , is one of the 27 regions of France, in the south-western part of metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It comprises the 5 departments of Dordogne, :Lot et Garonne, :Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes...	0	0
Burgundy	0	0
Franche-Comté Franche-Comté Franche-Comté the former "Free County" of Burgundy, as distinct from the neighbouring Duchy, is an administrative region and a traditional province of eastern France...	12	0
Alsace Alsace Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...	0	0
Total France	1 300	2 042

A 67 MW capacity can also be added for the DOM-TOM

Overseas departments and territories of France

The French Overseas Departments and Territories consist broadly of French-administered territories outside of the European continent. These territories have varying legal status and different levels of autonomy, although all have representation in the Parliament of France , and consequently the...

regions. This represents 1.718 wind turbines.

External links

• Mott MacDonald Sustainability Group Lenders' Engineer for Plantina Finance project in France