Greece turns to large renewable energy projects to shield consumers

The Greek Ministry of Environment and Energy is shifting its focus to large renewable energy projects so that energy costs for consumers are low during the energy transition.

Minister Thodoros Skylakakis said at the 6th Renewable & Storage Forum in Athens that the government supports small producers, but only to a certain extent because of cost considerations.

As large projects have lower production costs due to economies of scale, the ministry sees it as an opportunity for securing low electricity prices for households, businesses and industries. It means primarily large players would install the many gigawatts of renewables from the National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) for 2030.

“There is no energy democracy if the energy system does not support the consumer,” explained Skylakakis.

When it comes to small-scale projects, they would mainly be carried out as part of the net-billing scheme enacted earlier this year. Skylakakis also sees an opportunity for energy communities to offer demand response services, required in the market.

Attention turns to wind energy

It should be noted that Greece offered very high feed-in-tariffs for the initial renewable energy projects, from 2008 to 2013. The result is that consumers will have to pay for these plants until about 2030 through their bills.

With very few exceptions, such tariffs are now a thing of the past, including energy storage. Skylakakis stressed that even though Greece was late to develop energy storage, it was able to avoid subsidizing through feed-in tariffs and benefitted from the technology’s rapid cost drop in the past two years.

The ministry is also looking into pushing for more wind energy in the system. This year photovoltaics have dominated new installations with consecutive records in July and August (337 MW and 351 MW), while wind has stagnated. One solution would be to change the priority for connection terms in favor of wind farms, but no decision has been made yet.