Greece asking EU for additional 5 bln euros to finance energy investment loans

Greek Alternate Finance Minister Theodoros Skylakakis submitted a request to the European Commission for additional loan financing resources from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), amounting to five billion euros, in the context of REPowerEU.

REPowerEU is the European Commission’s plan to make Europe independent of Russian fossil fuels well before 2030, in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is a plan for energy saving, the production of clean energy, and the diversification of the Greek energy sources.

The five billion euros will be used, primarily, for the financing of private investments in energy – through loans and venture capital – which will concern renewable energy projects (RES), e.g. solar and wind energy, biomethane, green hydrogen; energy efficiency projects, e.g. interventions in existing business buildings, upgrading infrastructure and increasing the efficiency of production processes; initiatives to promote “clean” transport; clean energy access projects such as off-grid solutions and distributed electricity networks and battery energy storage systems (BESS).

The ministry said there is a high interest from investors, as the loans are granted on extremely favourable terms (borrowing rate, fixed 0.35% for very small and small enterprises and 1% for medium and large ones).

“The loan part of ‘Greece 2.0’, amounting to 12.7 billion euros, aims, primarily, at strengthening the competitiveness of the country’s businesses, contributing, financially, to the implementation of their investment plans. With the request of the additional 5.0 billion euros from the RRF, we are responding to the growing demand recorded for energy-saving investments,” Theodoros Skylakakis said.

[AMNA]