ELPE growing internationally, expanding for bigger RES role

Hellenic Petroleum ELPE is increasingly internationalizing with project interests covering a broadened range beyond petroleum, including renewable energy and natural gas, the group’s chief executive Andreas Siamisiis, presenting the group’s future course, has underlined.

ELPE has set a short-term RES installations target of 300 MW by the end of next year, followed by a mid-term goal of 600 MW by 2025.

Renewable energy is expected to be responsible for five to 10 percent of the group’s EBITDA figure in the next five years, ELPE officials have projected.

RES involvement in the petroleum group’s annual EBITDA performances, which, in recent times, have ranged between 600 to 800 million euros, is limited to two million euros.

This EBITDA contribution is soon expected to rise sharply, to a level of 20 million euros, as a result of ELPE’s takeover of an unfinished 204-MW solar energy project, Greece’s biggest, started by Germany’s Juwi close to Kozani in Greece’s north. “This is the first such project. More will follow,” Siamisiis said.

The Kozani solar energy project, Greece’s biggest by far, twenty times the size of the largest of existing units, ranks among Europe’s four biggest solar energy parks.

This investment, totaling 130 million euros, is expected to generate 300 GWh annually. Remaining development and installation work is seen requiring 16 months to complete. The project’s launch is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2021.