Ambassador Andersen : “Wind is coming”
During the WINDMission Greece Conference in October 2019 at the American College of Greece, Parity Platform welcomed H.E. Frode Overland Andersen, Norway’s Ambassador to Greece. His speech highlighted the immense potential of offshore wind energy for Greece and reiterated the strong support of Norway in terms of technical expertise and resources available to Greece.
Geographical Advantage & Strong Allies
The opening remark of H.E Andersen’s speech was “Wind is coming”. With this phrase H.E Andersen was pointing to the major opportunity for Greece to develop offshore wind turbine parks. He highlighted that Greece’s vast potential in sea space and wind resource availability, combined with Norway’s know-how on construction of large-scale marine infrastructure works can lead to beneficial cooperation.
Norway, home country of companies like Equinor, has been a pioneer in offshore oil-drilling platforms. Now the same facilities can be constructed for offshore wind turbine parks. Norway stands ready to channel its knowledge to its partners, such as Greece.
Strong Shipping industry and technical Capacity
In addition, he commented that, as Greece’s economy is emerging out of recession, the country needs to accelerate public and private investments that generate more quality positions for Greek workforce. Thus, large scale infrastructure projects are the country’s best practice at the moment. He pointed that energy industry stakeholders in Greece and abroad have the necessary technical expertise and are eager to move forward in that direction. After all, Greek shipping industry has been manufacturing ships for several years and is well positioned to deploy floating bases or marine foundations for wind turbines .
Political Will is key.
He emphasized that a robust regulatory framework for Offshore energy project development is the final step required to initiate such projects. The faster the country makes its move, he noted, the sooner it can reap the socioeconomic and environmental benefits from pioneering offshore wind energy in the Mediterranean.
The remarks made by H.E. Andersen underpin the rising interest of both the private and public sector in offshore wind projects in Greece. Off-shore wind energy is an opportunity for Greece to benefit its unique position in the Mediterranean and to establish itself as an energy exporter in Europe.
Conference Presentations are available for download via the Link
See the video with Ambassador Andersen remarks below.
The future looks bright for the wind energy sector in Greece. We, at Parity Platform, strive to promote investments in the promising Renewable Energy Sources market in Greece via our digital financing platform that connects investors with vetted projects in Greece.
