The Greek government has revised its short-term energy transition goals after realizing they would constrain growth too much, writes Ekathimerini.
The revised National Plan for Energy and Climate, which is posted for public consultation, will cut spending for the 2025-2030 period from €270 billion to €94 billion. Spending from 2031-2050 is estimated at just over €332 billion. The initial spending target, included in the plan submitted to the European Commission in December 2023, was deemed too ambitious for the country’s means.
More importantly, projections over the next 25 years showed that, because of the ambitious targets set in the original plan, the economy would grow at an average of 0.6% annually. This is because the energy transition affects a large number of policies and sectors: fiscal policy, transport, infrastructure, trade and industry, and education.
The Ministry of Environment and Energy directed the Center for Renewable Energy Sources and Energy Saving to redraw the plan with the goal of average growth of 1.2% until 2050 in mind. This meant revising the goals on electric transportation, energy savings in all sorts of buildings – residential, public and commercial – and switching to hydrogen and other new technologies.
Even in its revised form, the plan’s goals remain ambitious: It calls for a 58.6% cut in greenhouse gases by 2030, on the way to the country’s climate neutrality by 2050. Some targets have been revised upward: The percentage of renewable energy in total energy consumption will rise to 45.4% from 44% in the original plan. And the use of renewables for heating and cooling will reach 62.1%, up from 52%.
The greening of buildings is another ambitious goal, with an upgrade of 409,000 buildings to climate-friendly planned until 2030.
On the other hand, the target for electric vehicles in transport, 13.9% of the total in 2030, falls well short of the overall EU target of 29%. Government officials say priority will be given to the installation of charging points rather than increasing the fleet of electric-powered vehicles.