The latest statistics published by Greece put its installed solar capacity at 792 MW in 2021. But the country also announced plans to delay the coal phase-out until 2028.
Just this week, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis attended the launch of a 204 MW solar array, the country's largest PV project. But he also revealed the bad news that Greece will not phase out coal-fired power generation until 2028.
Greece's national renewable energy regulator, Dapeep (Organization for Renewable Energy Operators and Guarantee of Origin), has released the country's statistics for 2021. However, its report does not cover net metering systems, only counting solar arrays that are already connected to the grid, not those that are installed but waiting to be connected to the grid.
Greece installed 792 MW of new PV capacity last year, according to the Hellenic Photovoltaic Business Association (Helapco). These include 384 MW of grid-connected solar capacity, 38 MW of net metering systems connected to mainland or island grids, and 370 MW of new PV projects that were installed at the end of last year but will not be brought online until this year.
This problem is not new. The same problem occurred in 2020, involving solar projects below 500 kW enjoying a stable feed-in tariff (FIT). If these projects fail to connect to the grid on time, they will lose subsidy support. However, many projects are ready for grid connection, but the local grid is often slow to process the influx of grid connection applications, leading to the possibility that some of them may lose their stable FIT subsidy.
Therefore, the government allows these projects to continue to enjoy the FIT as long as they are fully installed within the deadline and then connected to the grid later.
In 2020, Greece installed 913 MW of new photovoltaic capacity. Currently, solar projects up to 500 kW are not required to participate in a competitive tender in Greece and can demand a stable electricity price of €65.74 ($71.43)/MWh as long as installation is completed by the end of August 2022.
Dapeep revealed that Greece has connected 3.66 GW of ground-mounted solar farms and 375 MW of rooftop PV systems to the grid by the end of 2021. These figures do not include net metering arrays. Dapeep also said that Greece had a surplus of about $250 million in its renewable energy fund as of December 2021 and expected the surplus to reach $2.45 billion by December 2022.
According to Helapco, Greece's cumulative net metered capacity is 89 MW. Quite impressively, 98% of net metering installations last year were commercial systems.
The government made some policy changes a few months ago to support net metering. However, the success of these measures is only reflected in the systems installed this year.
This week, Misotakis inaugurated Greece's largest photovoltaic project in the coal mining town of Kozani. In April 2019, the 204 MW project was successfully awarded in the country's first joint competitive tender for solar and wind.
Germany's Juwi Group won the first part of the project, 139.24 MW of electricity, at a subsidized electricity price of EUR 0.05446/kWh. Two smaller project blocks (27.68 MW and 37.37 MW respectively) received a subsidized electricity price of EUR 0.06472/kWh. The 204 MW project was later sold to Athens-based Hellenic Petroleum and forms part of Greece's goal of installing 3 GW of solar in the country's lignite regions. It is the largest bifacial solar park in Europe and the largest utility-scale solar farm in southeastern Europe, according to Juwi.
Delay in phasing out coal-fired power generation
However, Misotakis also brought some bad news this week. He revealed that Greece will delay the phase-out of coal-fired power generation until 2028 and plans to expand lignite mining output by 50%. The Greek prime minister said the moves did not represent a shift in energy policy and insisted Greece would remain committed to a green energy transition.
The recent support for lignite comes in response to the war in Ukraine and efforts to reduce reliance on Russian gas. Misotakis said the decision was a temporary measure and had no impact on Greece's climate and net-zero emissions targets.
In September 2019, the Greek government said it would phase out coal from its electricity mix by 2028. But several developments since then have brought that forward to 2025. This week, the phase-out of lignite was delayed again to 2028.
There are many factors affecting the timing of the phase-out of coal-fired power generation in Greece, including the price of natural gas, the price of carbon emissions, the speed at which Greece develops new renewable power generation capacity, new electricity interconnections, and EU policy mandates.
Greece's Ministry of Environment and Energy said a new bill will soon be introduced to allow faster licensing of renewable energy and energy storage policies. The new bill will be the second major overhaul of energy policy in Greece since the first policy package was introduced in 2020. But as time passed by, time was running out for Greece.