France has the highest penetration of nuclear power - up to 80% of annual terawatt hours consumed- pretty much the highest in the whole world. So it's fascinating to watch the progress of Theolia, France's sole listed wind energy company faced with the Wind Industry's traditional enemy.

Just yesterday, they formally transferred over to the Euronext Eurolist B market. This means a new ISIN (FR0000184814) and stock code TEO.

The news follows on from their acquisition a couple of weeks ago of a 30 MW wind farm project in Fruges, in the Somme department of Northern France. Theolia will own a 60% stake in the 30 MW project, including pre-emptive rights to the 40% held by local partners.

The aims of the company are tied in with the ambition of the French Government. Theolia aims to reach an installed capacity of 100MW by the end of 2006 and to build an additional 150MW per year until 2010, i.e. 550 MW. The French government has set a target of installing 10,000MW of wind capacity by 2010, so Theolia would theoretically have a 5.5% share. Not very much in the grand scheme of things, but a big jump from where they are now.

Just recently, the French government also announced increased feed-in tariffs for wind that would be comparable to Germany.

I would however bet a lot more on the returns generated on a French windfarm than a German one. Why?

Because France is a much windier place in general, starts from a lower base with far more virgin land to exploit and French planners love infrastructure. There are no famous winds in Germany that are given names like the Mistral, the Marin or even the Transmontana. And there really isn't much room for onshore expansion. Windspeed matters because it hugely affects the power curve of a wind turbine; every doubling in the speed of the wind multiplies the turbines power output by 8 times. Germany is actually a pretty dismal location for windspeeds and Southern Germany is terrible. That's why German wind subsidies are so high and future expansion is almost certainly going to be offshore where windspeeds are higher.

France though has only just got started.