The Mesohora dam stands across a ravine cut by the Acheloos river around 15 years ago, but it’s reservoir is empty. The two dams together are likely to produce 890 gigawatt-hours per year (GWh) which was considered enough to supply power to ten thousand of the homes, but the Acheloos was continuously flowing via diversion tunnels. It is because both Sykia and Mesohora, simultaneously with two hydroelectric dams, were constructed on a system that is not yet started. However, both of the dams were part of a huge system with multiple purposes. Their blueprint was designed to hold giant reservoirs. However, such capacity was made to divert 600 million tons of water each year to the Thessaly plane, which is Greece biggest farming region.
Also, a 17 km tunnel built under the Pindos mountain was never lined with concrete, and furthermore, the tunnel is now likely to be in danger of collapsing.
In addition, the unsustainable farming techniques have led Thessaly to bore its underground aquifer dry. The desertification now threatens this region – comprising around 1 million people. In 2000, Greece’s highest administrative Court, the Council of State, ruled the environmental and cultural influence of Acheloos diversion had not been systematically done, which ultimately brought the work to a halt. However, this has almost ruined more than a billion-dollar taxpayers money.
However, in between these rising temperatures, which are being linked to climate change along with the growing obligations to satisfy the clean energy goals, the government states that it is taking steps to revive the dam projects as a part of the framework to satisfy both the decarbonisation target and irrigation needs of Greece.
Furthermore, the Prime Minister recently mentioned that the government would introduce a public-private project funding plan worth more than a billion dollars for irrigation infrastructure, including pipes, lakes, and dam networks.
Despite enough availability of wind and sun energy in Greece, it is a green energy leggard in Europe. In the year 2019, it only generated 29 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, when compared to the whole of Europe with an average of 34 %.
However, Greece is making straggling efforts due to its main energy producer, the Public Power Corporation, which has immensely held its grip tight to the ground to maintain coal as its primary energy source. Thereby it left the electricity production from gas and renewable sources wholly in the hands of private companies. As a result, the share of the electricity market shrank from 100 % to 40%.
Now, the corporation is transforming itself into a green energy revolution. However, the start of this turnaround came in September 2019, when the Prime Minister announced that the corporation would phase out the coal by 2028.
