According to the statistics published by the Hellenic Wind Energy Scientific Association (ELETAEN, Greece connected 110 new wind turbines with a total output capacity of 287.3 megawatts (MW) to its grid in the first half of 2020, which accounts for an 8 per cent increase compared to the end of 2019.
This brings the country’s cumulative installed capacity to 3,884 MW. President of ELETAEN Panagiotis Ladakakos added that the increase took place in an extremely volatile and complex regulatory environment, aggravated by the severe restrictive measures against the COVID-19, which slowed the pace of installing the wind farms and created temporary problems in the transportation of equipment and the movement of workers across the country.
The list of the largest owners of installed capacity is headed by domestic utility Terna Energy with 585.9 MW accounting for 15.1 per cent of the total installed capacity, followed by construction group Ellaktor (482.3 MW), Italy’s Enel Green Power (353.7 MW), EREN Hellas (282.9 MW) and Iberdrola’s subsidiary Rokas (270.9 MW).
Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems was supplying the wind turbines for 46.3 per cent of the projects, followed by Germany’s Enercon, accounting for 27.1 per cent of the market share in the first half of the year.
The growth rate of the industry for the first half of 2020 lags behind the record growth Greece saw in 2019 (when the increase was almost four times the annual average rate of the previous decade) but it is still more than double of the 10-year average. ELETAEN notes that although the growth rate is impressive, there is still room for improvement to achieve the country’s energy and climate goals.
The Greek government has announced ambitious targets for renewables. The country’s updated National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP), targets 7 gigawatts (GW) of wind energy by 2030, 0.4 GW more than in the initial plan. By 2030 the government expects that energy generated from wind, solar and hydroelectric power will account for at least 35 per cent of the country’s energy consumption.
Greece was one of the eight Member States who earlier this year called on the EU Commission to recognise wind energy as a priority strategic European value chain and to set out an EU industrial policy for renewables.
