Gas de France snaps up wind power company

Salut mes potes. Gaz de France is set to become, metaphorically at least, Vent de France, after the energy company announced it was acquiring a company seemingly fluent in Franglish called Nass & Wind Technologie.

Gaz de France already owns the biggest wind farm assets in France, making it the biggest misnomer since aluminium put on a fake moustache and glasses and called itself tin foil. Who knew?

Nass & Wind develops, builds and operates land based wind farms in France and runs installed capacity of 34 MW, and has all the boxes ticked for 150 MW more in the short term. And there’s more: its pipeline has a whopping 1500 MW in the long term.

And this is what Gaz de France has to say about its latest acquisition:

This acquisition is fully in step with the Group’s strategy in electricity production generated from renewable energies, in particular wind energy. Gaz de France already owns the largest wind farm assets in France, with installed capacity of almost 145 MW at the beginning of 2008.

In light of the acquisitions carried out over the last few months, Gaz de France has decided to focus and rationalise the stakes it holds by creating a subsidiary dedicated to renewable energies, which will be named “GDF Futures Energies”.
This company now encompasses all of the subsidiaries and shares owned by Gaz de France in the field of electricity generated from wind power: Maïa Eolis, Erelia, Eoliennes de la Haute-Lys and soon Nass & Wind Technologie.
GDF Futures Energies, soon to be operational, will be responsible for:
• developing, building and managing the asset portfolio in green electricity generation,
• handling operations and maintenance at the said facilities through its own subsidiaries,
• strengthening, bringing together and creating synergies between the industrial skills in the Group to ensure its development in this field.
The creation of GDF Futures Energies represents a further step in Gaz de France’s sustainable development policy, designed in response to today’s global challenges. With this new subsidiary, the Group strengthens its commitment to the reduction of greenhouse gases, to the use of renewable sources of energy designed to combat global warming, and to security of power supply. GDF Futures Energies will base its growth principally on the development of wind power but it will also contribute actively to other forms of green electricity generation such as solar power, for example.