ADMIE HOLDING – Electrifying Greece
If everything
goes according to plan, 2024 will witness the completion of the Ariadne Interconnection,
a $1.1 billion project linking the electricity system of the island of Crete to
the national mainland grid in Attica, delivering huge benefits to the Greek people.
This is the largest electrical infrastructure initiative ever undertaken by
Greece, and one of the top five most innovative direct-current projects ever
attempted in Europe. Most importantly, it will reduce Greece’s overall annual
electricity bill by as much as $600 million and, critically, reduce Crete’s
carbon emissions from electricity production to precisely zero.
Despite its size, the Ariadne Interconnection is only one part of a larger initiative to use island-to-mainland interconnections and decarbonise the country’s power production mix. A similar project to connect the Cycladic Islands (including Santorini) is due to be rolled out a year later. “These interconnections help reduce Greece’s electricity cost in two ways,” says Yannis Karampelas, who, as CEO of ADMIE HOLDING, a Greek-listed company that owns 51% of the Greek Transmission System Operator, is responsible for the current rapid transformation of the Greek electricity sector. “On one level, it relieves the islands of the expense of generating power from oil, which the rest of Greece currently has to subsidise.
On another, the construction of more system networks allows us to accelerate the integration of renewable energy sources to the grid, which will ultimately reduce the cost of electricity even further.”
Alongside its domestic activities, ADMIE is playing a central role in promoting Greece’s integration into the pan-European and wider energy infrastructure network. Its development of the domestic part of the second Greece-Bulgaria interconnection, for instance, will triple the energy transferred between the two countries. The company is also conducting a feasibility study for a secondary reinforcing interconnection between Greece and Italy.
“While our national strategy is to harness our natural resources to transform Greece into a truly green country -- and we are looking to break the 10 gigawatt RES barrier in the near future -- our wider mission is to establish the nation as an energy hub for the Southeastern Mediterranean region, as is the vision of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis” says Karampelas. “This will take a little longer, but we are getting there step by step.”
That goal includes
attracting more foreign investment. “The potential for strong returns is high,”
Karampelas says. “Institutional investors should be giving Greece some very serious
consideration.”
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