Crete-Athens link SPV ‘illegal but IPTO can still lead project’

The European Commission’s division for Projects of Common Interest regards an initiative by RAE, Greece’s Regulatory Authority for Energy, giving Greek power grid operator IPTO and its special purpose vehicle (SPV) development and financial control of a Crete-Athens grid interconnection plan as an illegal act, it made clear at a meeting in Brussels yesterday and called for the decision’s cancellation as a condition for the project to remain a part of Euroasia Interconnector, a wider PCI-status project planned to link the Greek, Cypriot and Israeli power grids via Crete.

Even so, the Brussels-based PCI team noted it believes IPTO can still spearhead the project’s development and called for a solution by January that would enable the Greek operator to select its project partners as long as technical requirements are supervised by a special committee as a means of ensuring compatibility between the Crete-Athens link and the wider Greek-Cypriot-Israeli interconnection.

IPTO and Cyprus’s Euroasia Interconnector consortium have been locked in a dispute for control of the wider project’s Crete-Athens link.