Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his energy minister Kostas Skrekas are scheduled to visit power utility PPC’s slow-moving Mesohora hydropower project in west Thessaly on Saturday as part of a wider visit to the area, for an update on its progress.

The Mesohora dam, along with the E 65 highway project in central Greece, will be the main topics of discussion at meetings, a few hours later in Trikala, between the PM, energy minister and regional authorities.

The Mesohora dam, close to completion since 2001, has been delayed by a series of setbacks, including, most recently, November’s nullification of the project’s environmental terms by the Council of State, Greece’s Supreme Administrative Court.

PPC is being deprived of revenue worth 30 million euros annually as a result of the project’s delay.

Efforts now being made to put the project’s completion back on track include PPC’s ongoing preparation of a new environmental impact study, which should pave the way for the dam’s new environmental terms.

The project’s new environmental license could be a swift procedure, enabling a restart of work for completion and trial tests of the new dam by the end of 2023, according to the most optimistic of forecasts.

The Mesohora hydropower facility, an investment exceeding 400 million euros, is designed to have a 160-MW capacity and produce eco-friendly electricity amounts of 360 GWh, annually.