Despite the economic pitfall that is hitting the Greek market hard, the Mediterranean country has announced that it will delve further into renewable energy even looking into a partnership with Libya to expand its efforts. Greece’s Ministry of Environment, Energy, and Climate Change announced that it will use €5.5 billion toward environment and energy investments, as reported by Alternative Energy Africa on April 5.
Mohamed Ekhlat, from the Renewable Energy Authority of Libya, said at the MENASOL conference held in Cairo from May 4-5 that Libya anticipated having several wind farms generating around 500 MW by 2015 with its overall target to produce 1,000 MW of wind energy by 2020 (Libya’s Plans for RE). Al-Mahmudi said that Libya was undergoing a major development phase and suggested setting up an economic trade zone between the North African country and Greece.
Greece’s Prime Minister George Papandreou met with his Libyan counterpart Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmudi on May 21 to discuss prospects for additional cooperation in the renewable energy sector as well as natural gas, construction, sea transportation, and tourism. The North African country is trying to diversify the energy mix hoping to reach an ambitious goal of generating 10% of renewable energy by 2020 although Libya’s renewable energy production currently accounts for less than 1% of its total energy useage.
However, Greece is facing a huge economic meltdown as the Bank of Greece said that the country’s economic output in 2010 will fall by 2% ‒ far worse than the government’s prediction of between 1.2% and 1.7%. "The Greek economy has fallen into a vicious circle with only one way out: the drastic reduction of the deficit and debt," the bank’s annual monetary policy report said.
"We are determined to stand by Greece during this economic crisis," Al-Mahmudi said.
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