Our country is currently taking the first steps to develop offshore wind farmwith the aim of installing 1.9 GW units until the beginning of the next decade, which will increase to 13 GW gradually by 2050.
The above is foreseen in the National Plan for Energy and Climate (ESCE), which is the road map of Greece with the full reward of its economy. However, the Aeolian sector calls for the opportunity to extend the offshore wind farms and beyond the country’s territorial waters, by exploiting the EEZ.
As ELETAEN’s General Manager, Panagiotis Papastamatiou, said in this regard, this is an important issue, which is also related to visual nuisance, as the farther from the coasts the parks are, the more acceptable they will be made by public opinion. This will facilitate their development and benefit the country.
He argued, speaking at the 10th Energy Symposium that Greece is not going to achieve its energy goal for 2050, remaining only within the 6 nautical miles of our territorial waters.
By extension, planning now must be started to utilize the EEZ in the already defined zones, but also of the potential future EEZs.
According to ELETAEN, the Ionian demarcated EEZ is not suitable for offshore winds, but there is a corresponding to Egypt where there are promising areas in terms of depth and wind potential.
Such a point is e.g. Between Crete and Kassos in the Carpathian Sea, which has been particularly concerned with the current year due to cable investigations with Cyprus and the Turkish reactions that occurred there last summer.
In any case, the Aeolian sector calls for flexibility to be flexible and to give off the offshore wind 5-10% of the country’s maritime area in new areas outside 6 nm.