Further and swifter renewable energy growth is a top priority for the newly appointed energy minister Costis Hatzidakis, as he made clear at the ministry’s handover ceremony earlier this week.

The Prime Minister-elect Kyriakos Mitsotakis has also ranked the RES sector as a top priority in instructions forwarded to his energy minister.

In the lead-up to last weekend’s elections, highly ranked RES sector officials complained that the current level of bureaucracy and other administrative obstacles were stifling renewable energy plans.

Citing related studies, Giorgos Peristeris, president at ESIAPE, the Greek Association of Renewable Energy Source Electricity Producers, warned that investment plans worth 8.5 billion euros for renewable energy, energy storage and grid interconnection projects are in danger of not being executed as a result of the bureaucracy.

Panagiotis Ladakakos, the chief official at ELETAEN, the Greek Wind Energy Association, has also complained of high levels of bureaucracy troubling the RES sector.

The accumulation of problems created by slow licensing procedures at RAE, the Regulatory Authority for Energy, as well as slow court decisions and environmental approvals for projects, can end up delaying projects by as many as 20 years, officials have noted. This is a major disincentive for foreign investors otherwise interested in the Greek market, they added.