Energy Community Insights: Greece

The Life COMET project aims to transform the community energy landscape in Central and Eastern Europe through assessment, experience sharing, and coalition building. Our series of blog posts “Energy Community Insights: A Tour of Central & Eastern Europe” summarizes national assessments and action plans for enhancing energy community maturity* in Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia.

This fifth blog post explores the current landscape of energy communities in Greece, highlighting key challenges and offering policy recommendations to foster their growth and ensure long-term sustainability.

Greece possesses significant solar and wind potential, alongside a history of cooperative initiatives. However, the growth of energy communities has been slow despite the legal framework established in 2018 (Law 4513/2018). As of September 2024, over 1,700 energy communities are registered, primarily in rural areas affected by lignite activities, such as Central and Western Macedonia. While these communities aim to reduce energy costs, only a few dozen represent authentic citizen-led projects that fully embrace energy democracy.

These genuine citizen initiatives have developed projects exceeding 7.5 MWp, mainly focused on photovoltaic self-consumption, with active involvement from citizens and vulnerable households. Although progress has been slow, applications for grid connections from energy communities now surpass those from commercial entities, showing unprecedented momentum. However, delays in connecting projects to the grid and limited access create substantial barriers, causing uncertainty and frustration among members.

Financial and market constraints

• Funding mechanisms such as the Just Transition Operational Program and the Recovery and Resilience Plan often overlook the financial needs of citizen-led initiatives.
• Most energy communities rely on member investments, limiting accessibility for lower-income citizens.
• Banks show limited support for nonprofit community initiatives, restricting the ability to scale projects.

Grid and bureaucratic hurdles

• Delays in connecting projects to the grid due to administrative bottlenecks discourage further investment.
• Energy suppliers often fail to comply fully with the previously existing net-metering contracts, causing financial uncertainty for energy communities and their net-billing projects ahead.

Public awareness and stakeholder engagement

• Energy communities remain largely unknown to the public, necessitating stronger awareness campaigns.
• Despite the existence of networks like Desmi, which promotes enabling policies for energy communities, stakeholder participation in national energy policy remains minimal.
• The absence of consistent policy dialogue limits the impact of energy communities in the national energy transition.

To overcome these challenges and foster a more supportive environment for energy communities, Greece must adopt a strategic approach that includes the following key actions:

Improved stakeholder engagement and public awareness

• Strengthen partnerships between energy communities, municipalities, and national agencies to ensure a shift in Greece’s energy transition toward citizen-led solutions.
• Increase public awareness through targeted education campaigns highlighting the benefits of energy communities.
• Encourage municipalities to integrate energy community planning within their local energy strategies.

Despite significant obstacles, Greece’s energy community movement is gaining momentum. Recent legislation now allows for collective renewable energy self-consumption at the apartment-building level, encouraging community participation and reducing household energy costs. However, larger-scale energy-saving efforts require stronger financial and regulatory support.

Local initiatives like the "Hyperion" Energy Community in Athens showcase the potential of grassroots efforts, promoting energy savings and strengthening community bonds. Meanwhile, the “Desmi” network continues to advocate for more inclusive and sustainable energy policies, though greater stakeholder involvement is needed for lasting impact.

Greece has the potential to lead in community-driven renewable energy, but achieving this goal will require sustained political commitment, regulatory clarity, and improved financial support. Stay tuned for our next blog post about Greece, where we will explore the work done by the Desmi network to support energy community developments in the country.

*  To measure maturity, a tailor-made assessment tool was created, incorporating weighted criteria and scoring countries' performance across 11 areas: political will, transposition process, local, regional and national strategies, regulatory framework, business models, financing, collective self-consumption, networking, knowledge, awareness and stakeholder engagement. Read the full assessment for all 7 countries studied here.