EBRD to Finance Renewable Energy Investments in Greece
The London-based financing agency says the country has huge potential for renewables, including solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal power.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's board of directors has approved a framework committing up to €300 million (about $319 million in U.S. dollars) to finance renewable energy investments in Greece. The London-based financing agency says the country has huge potential for renewables, including solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal power.
The framework will finance investments in electricity generation from renewable sources and in electricity distribution and transmission capacity to improve efficiency, reduce losses, and enable the integration of renewables into Greece's grid, and it follows Greece's establishment last year a more market-based renewable-energy support scheme that introduces competitive auctions to replace fixed-price feed-in tariffs. It also aids the country’s target of adding 2.4 GW of new green-energy generation capacity by 2020, according to EBRD.
Expected to result in annual emissions savings of 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the framework may in the near term finance – pending board approval -- a 43 MW wind farm project developed by Volterra S.A., a Greek renewable energy developer and electricity operator owned by the Greek construction company J&P Avax.
"This framework marks a milestone in our engagement in Greece," said Harry Boyd-Carpenter, EBRD's new director for Power and Energy. "It provides us with the opportunity to play an important role in ensuring that the country’s new renewables scheme is successful and thus supporting Greece's energy security and carbon-reduction goals. The EBRD renewable energy framework will make the Greek economy greener, more resilient and more competitive."