Thursday, 13 December 2018

A workshop on good practices aiming at limiting the impact of wind farms on biodiversity in Greece was organized by the CRES and the NCC company as part of the LIFE12BIO/GR/000554.

At the beginning of the workshop, the President of HWEA, Panagiotis Ladakakos, addressed the following:

HWEA has supported this specific Life project and considers it extremely positive to bring together the sector of people dealing with biodiversity and the wind industry. Wind energy is the best ally of biodiversity since it is a key weapon to prevent climate change.

More than 2000 wind turbines have been installed in Greece. Almost a quarter of these operate in N2000 areas. Therefore, we should not talk more speculation but based on the experience.

Greece has made progress in establishing a coherent and adequate framework for environmental legislation. Over the last two decades the industry and the administration have gained tremendous knowledge and experience. The studies being carried out and the controls made are of high quality. There is always room for improvement. However, there are cases where we now reach a limit of exaggeration by trying to investigate alleged problems or suspected impacts that have generally been proven to be out of the question.

The integrated institutional framework for environmental protection includes the Spatial Framework for RES, the Biodiversity Act, the JMD for SPA, the Law 4014/2011, many other JMDs etc.

The executives and employees of the wind industry are present in many mountains of Greece. It is a good opportunity to capitalize on this presence in order to multiply the benefits to the environment: for example, with appropriate cooperation, information and training by the relevant bodies, we can help reduce the impact on birds by poisoned baits or poaching, which is much larger from the wind farms.

The above issues were further analyzed by Panagiotis Papastamatiou with his special speech during the workshop.

Download the presentation of P.Papastamatiou