IENE Participated in the “Green Energy Investment Forum” Convened by the Energy Policy and Development Center of Athens University

Last Wednesday, October 11, the Institute participated in the annual “Energy and Climate Change” conference organised by the Energy Policy and Development Center of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens ( NKUA), following an invitation by Professor Dimitris Mavrakis, the chairman of the Center. More specifically the IENE, through its Chairman and Executive Director, Costis Stambolis,contributed in the 10th Green Energy Investment Forum by presenting a paper on the “Green Energy Investment Challenges in SE Europe” (you may view the presentation here)

A key aspect of the above presentation concerned the difficulties which are now faced across SE Europe in adopting clean energy technologies in a sufficiently large scale to be able to have a sizeable impact in the electricity and energy mix of the region. With the region being a major oil and gas importer but also relying to a large extent on indigenous coal and lignite resources the issue of decarbonisation presents major challenges. Another major challenge being the high energy dependence for most countries in the region. Hence the benefits from the introduction of large scale clean technologies, such as RES and energy efficiency is two fold. First the transition to clean energy will help bolster energy self sufficiency, and secondly will contribute towards the lowering of CO2 emissions.

The IENE presentation concluded by presenting an overview of the investment outlook (2022-2031) in the whole SEE region as it is stated in the Institute’s flagship publication , the “ SEE Energy Outlook 2022”. Out of a total € 468 billion which covers the entire energy sector some €260 billion are earmarked for electricity and RES projects. If we add the anticipated investments in various energy efficiency programmes the total amount in clean technologies reaches €350 billion.