Overview
- The Ministry for the Ecological Transition issued a favorable environmental impact declaration for Plemcat on Monday, June 22, clearing the principal regulatory hurdle to the experimental floating wind project.
- Plemcat is a publicly funded R&D platform promoted by IREC and the Generalitat that will test three different floating turbine prototypes in a 7.8 km² site about 22–26 km off the Gulf of Roses in roughly 140 m of water.
- The test array is capped at 30 MW total with individual turbines up to about 15 MW and tip heights near 260 m, and it will include a floating connection buoy, a buried export cable and an onshore substation.
- Approved mitigation and monitoring measures require directional horizontal drilling to bury the subsea cable around Cymodocea nodosa seagrass, bird-protection steps for pelagic species such as pardelas, and ongoing marine and avian monitoring.
- Public funding of roughly €80 million is in place and three developers (Hive Wind Energy, Exponential Renewables and Esteyco) were preselected, while local groups have signaled opposition and legal or administrative challenges remain possible.