France (and companies like EDF or GDF) are still at the greenwashing stage of wind development. France does it because of EU rules, and EDF and GDF do it because they are forced to.

Geramny's utilities were at that stage 3-5 years ago, but are moving on and decent parts of their organisations now actually believe in wind, in particular offshore wind, because (i) that's where a lot of their investment money is going right now (and managers love to have big budget to manage) and (ii) early projects are now online and are demonstrating their value to them in their portfolio.

Wind power