‘Gas has no future,’ eco group says in response to drilling plans
The world is facing a fossil fuel crisis, not an energy crisis, and Greece should not be speculating on hydrocarbon reserves that threaten its seas and the marine life in them, environmental conservation group WWF said in a statement on Thursday.
Responding to the government’s announcement this week that exploratory drilling is starting to the west of the Peloponnese and Crete in a bid to bolster the country’s energy security, WWF said that rising energy costs are a result of Greece’s “profound dependence” on fossil fuels and its failure to invest in clean energy.
“The only way to cleanse the energy mix entirely of fossil fuels is to give full political and institutional support to a front-loaded package of energy upgrades and conservation,” it advised.
“Gas has no future,” WWF said.
“We cannot stress it enough that dealing with the energy crisis requires political innovation and long-term, sustainable and socially equitable energy planning and not political decisions that are short-term, forced and harmful to nature and humans,” said the head of policy for WWF Greece, Theodota Nantsou.
WWF also accused the government of not being forthcoming about its plans, saying that seismic surveys began in Greece’s seas on October 25 and not this week as announced. That, it says, is a violation of the ministerial decision specifying – on the basis of the environmental impact study for the two projects – that seismic surveys can only be conducted in the winter in order to minimize the impact on vulnerable marine mammals in the area.
