AO10: France has put a price on proof

At noon last Monday, 12 October, bids closed for AO10, France’s largest offshore wind tender to date. It offers around 10 GW across 11 projects. The regulator, CRE, now ranks the offers; winners are expected in early 2027.¹⁵¹⁵

First, what AO10 actually is

AO10 is often called France’s floating wind tender. Floating is the hard part, but it is not floating-only. Seven of the 11 projects are floating and four are fixed-bottom, with each technology accounting for roughly half of the capacity.¹⁴

• Eastern Channel (Normandy): three fixed-bottom projects of 1.35 GW each at Fécamp Grand Large.⁴
• North Atlantic and western Channel: floating projects at Bretagne Nord Ouest (1.2 GW) and Bretagne Sud 2 (0.5 GW).⁴
• South Atlantic: Oléron 1, a fixed-bottom project of 1.2 GW.⁴
• Mediterranean: floating projects at Golfe du Lion Centre (1.1 GW plus two of 550 MW), Narbonnaise Sud Hérault 2 (0.5 GW) and Golfe de Fos 2 (0.5 GW).⁴

By my arithmetic, that is about 5.25 GW of fixed-bottom and 4.9 GW of floating capacity. It merges the former AO9 and AO10 rounds, under a €63 billion, 25-year support scheme the European Commission approved in July.¹⁴⁷

The scoring grid, read as a bid manager

Each offer is scored out of 100 points.²

• Price, 70 points. The cheapest bid on a project gets all 70.
• Robustness of the contractual and financial set-up, 18 points. Together with price, this makes the 88 points for “economic and financial value”.
• Carbon footprint of manufacturing, 6 points. This covers foundations and turbines.
• European content, 6 points. This counts how many of nine key components, such as nacelles, blades, magnets, bearings and foundations, come from outside the dominant non-EU supplier country, for at least 75% of the turbine-plus-foundation units. These criteria are drawn from the EU Net Zero Industry Act. Five components scores zero; eight scores the full six.²⁶

The price formula is the detail that matters. The score falls in a straight line from the cheapest bid, divided by the larger of €70/MWh or the spread between the highest and lowest bids on that project.² So unless the bids on a project are more than €70/MWh apart, every €1/MWh above the cheapest bid costs one point. My reading is that the 18 robustness points are worth about €18/MWh of price. One extra European component is worth about €2/MWh.

The robustness points are tested hard. CRE scores:²

• the credibility of capex (3 points) and opex (1 point);
• the financing structure and project IRR (3 points);
• post-CfD revenue assumptions (2 points);
• technical assumptions (9 points), split between the turbine model (5 points) and the foundation concept and industrial plan (4 points).

A bid scoring below 11 of the 18 points is eliminated. So is a bid scoring zero on capex, financing or the technical assumptions.² CRE had pushed for that 11-point threshold.³ Turbine credibility jumped from 1 point in the AO9 draft to 5 because bidders now choose their model. Spinergie reads this as requiring at least a tested prototype, not a design on paper.³⁵ Cybersecurity is not scored at all. It is a pass-or-fail condition.²⁵

What did bidders really have to prove?

1. A cost base an expert panel will believe.
2. A financing structure that holds at the IRR they claim.
3. A named, credible industrial route: turbine, foundation, port and suppliers, with letters of support specific to the project, its sea area and its technology.²

Robustness was worth 5 points in AO5; now it is 18.⁵ A cheap bid that cannot be evidenced is no longer just risky. It loses points on the day.

The sea areas are not equal

Fécamp Grand Large is the easy end. The water is shallow (under 50 m on average) and the sites are close to shore. A nearby site, Centre Manche 2 (AO8), was awarded in September 2025 at €66/MWh.⁵¹¹ Spinergie expects these lots to clear comfortably.⁵

Oléron 1 is the warning. It is also fixed-bottom, but the water is over 60 m deep on average, the seabed is difficult and the wind is weak. It received no bids at all in AO7.⁵¹¹

The floating sites split again. The Mediterranean offers strong wind, soft seabeds suited to drag anchors and depths of 90–95 m. The Brittany sites are harsher and may need drilled anchors.⁵

There is also an award cap. Each bidder can win at most one of the new projects per sea area, with the two Atlantic areas counted as one.² The three Normandy lots will therefore go to three different winners. The real question is which one site per sea area, and with whom.

PPE2, PPE3 and why AO10 carries the pipeline

France plans its energy mix in multi-year plans called PPEs. The previous plan, PPE2 (2020), targeted 2.4 GW of offshore wind in service by the end of 2023 and 5.2–6.2 GW by 2028.⁹ France missed the 2023 target. About 1.5 GW was in service at the end of 2024.¹⁰ The three AO10 extension projects are the PPE2 legacy: they are scored first and have grid dates from 2032 to 2034.²

PPE3, adopted by decree in February 2026, targets at least 15 GW in service by 2035. It also aims for 26 GW to be awarded cumulatively by 2030–31, through AO11 and later rounds.⁸ The government already counted about 7.8 GW in service, under construction or in development after AO8.¹¹ On that basis, AO10 alone more than doubles the awarded pipeline. Even so, it still leaves roughly 8 GW for later rounds (my arithmetic).

Timing is the catch. Most AO10 grid connections are planned for 2035 at the earliest, and three projects for 2037.² The 2035 target therefore depends heavily on projects already awarded being delivered on time. It is also the last tender before the 2027 presidential election, and several candidates have questioned offshore wind support.⁵¹⁴

Fixed, floating and a cap that is not a cap

There is no price cap per project. Instead the government set a target capacity-weighted average of €100/MWh (January 2024 money, indexed) across all provisional winners.²³ If the average comes in above the target, CRE drops projects one by one. It starts with the latest grid dates and, within each group, the highest prices, until the average fits.² CRE itself warned that this “unprecedented” design complicates bid strategy.³

In effect, cheap fixed-bottom bids make room for floating. As an illustration only: if the Normandy and Oléron lots averaged €70/MWh, floating could average about €130/MWh and the portfolio would still meet the target. That is well below the £216.49/MWh (2024 prices) the UK paid for two small floating projects in its last offshore round, AR7.¹²

The supply-chain load, on Spinergie’s estimates, falls hardest on floating.⁵

• Turbines: around 670 for the whole tender, more than a year of combined Siemens Gamesa and Vestas nacelle output.
• Floaters: around 330 of them, built with serial fabrication methods that do not yet exist at this scale.
• Global base: less than 500 MW of floating capacity operates worldwide today.
• Ports: Fos-sur-Mer, Port-La Nouvelle, Brest and La Rochelle are all still building capacity.

Appetite is not a given: TotalEnergies’ chief executive has said the company is no longer interested in floating wind.¹⁴ CRE has not disclosed who bid.¹

What it means for your next bid

For UK readers, the comparison is AR8, the UK’s current CfD round. It is a sealed-bid auction against administrative strike prices: £271/MWh for floating in 2024 prices, and government will see the floating bids.¹³ Its budget notice is due on 19 November.¹⁶ Results are reported for February 2027, the same window as AO10’s awards, so both rounds will be competing for the same turbines, cables and vessels.

My takeaways, whatever the market:

• Assume your evidence will be scored, not just read. Treat capex, opex, IRR, turbine and foundation choices as a file an expert panel will mark. That is literally the case in France.
• Know what a point is worth in money. In AO10 a robustness point is worth about €1/MWh. Do that arithmetic for every round before deciding where senior time goes.
• Lock in supply-chain claims before the bid. Letters of support, European sourcing and port slots are now part of the price, not a construction-phase detail.
• Bid as part of a portfolio. When a field-wide average decides who clears, your price depends partly on other people’s projects.

The common thread is that bids are now won on evidence, not hours. I set out the workflow behind that in our white paper, Bids are now won on evidence, not hours. The idea: twice the senior time on the judgement that wins the deal, and still fewer hours overall.

If you bid into AO10, I would like to hear what the robustness file cost you.

Yorik

Sources

1. Offshore Wind (offshorewind.biz), “Bidding Period Closes for 10 GW French Offshore Wind Tender”, 15 Oct 2026. offshorewind.biz
2. CRE, AO10 cahier des charges (procédure d’appel d’offres n°1/2026), Art. 1.1, 3.2, 3.2.4, 3.3.5. cre.fr
3. CRE, Délibération n°2026-95 du 12 mai 2026 (opinion on the draft AO10 tender rules). cre.fr
4. DGEC, Eoliennes en mer, “Appel d’offres n°10”. eoliennesenmer.fr
5. Spinergie, “AO10 explained”, 14 Oct 2026. spinergie.com
6. Aegir Insights, “AO10 is live: Inside the rules of France’s largest offshore wind auction”, 30 Jun 2026. aegirinsights.com
7. European Commission, “Commission approves French State aid to support offshore wind energy”, IP/26/1577, 13 Jul 2026. European Commission
8. Décret n°2026-76 du 12 février 2026 (PPE3), JORF 13 Feb 2026. economie.gouv.fr
9. Décret n°2020-456 du 21 avril 2020 (PPE2), Art. 3. Légifrance
10. SDES, Chiffres clés des énergies renouvelables 2025, “Objectifs dans le cadre de la PPE”. statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr
11. Ministère de l’Économie, “Désignation du lauréat de l’appel d’offres Centre Manche 2 (AO8) et infructuosité de l’appel d’offres Oléron 1 (AO7)”, 24 Sep 2025. presse.economie.gouv.fr
12. DESNZ, Contracts for Difference Allocation Round 7 results, 14 Jan 2026. gov.uk
13. DESNZ, CfD AR8 Price and Pot Notice, 6 Jul 2026. gov.uk
14. La Tribune, “Eolien en mer : ce qui pourrait faire trébucher le dernier appel d’offres de l’ère Macron”, 12 Oct 2026. La Tribune
15. Windtech International, “France’s AO10 offshore wind tender closes for bids”, 14 Oct 2026. Windtech International
16. CfD Allocation Round microsite, “AR8 Timeline”, and Energy Voice, “AR8 results pushed onto longest timeline”, 15 Oct 2026. cfdallocationround.uk

Commercial commentary, not legal or investment advice. Figures in euros are as published; “my arithmetic” and “illustration” mark my own calculations. Sources checked 17 October 2026.