Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the establishment of a new special fund for reducing the Greek islands’ dependence on fossil fuels and the development of renewable energy sources to meet their needs, during the international conference “Our Ocean Conference”, which this year is hosted in Athens.

The resources, as the prime minister mentioned, will come from the rights of the European Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System and, depending on the fluctuating price of the auctioned rights, it is estimated that they could amount to 2 billion euros.

According to Mitsotakis, the funds will be allocated primarily to projects for “connecting our islands to the mainland grid, energy storage, renewable energy sources, including offshore wind energy” as well as for “the construction of multi-purpose water reservoirs.”

Government sources said that the agreement to finance the new decarbonisation fund through the European Emissions Trading System was reached recently after government negotiations with the European Commission and the European Investment Bank.

The same sources noted that the amount of 2 billion euros constitutes a conservative estimate of the funds that our country will have at its disposal.

In the context of this year’s 9th “Our Ocean Conference,” Greece undertook 21 commitments amounting to 780 million euros for the protection and sustainable use of the oceans and seas.

The first foresees the creation of two more large marine national parks, one in the Aegean and one in the Ionian.

Greece also committed to a ban on trawling, which is considered particularly harmful to marine ecosystems. The ban will take effect in national marine parks by 2026 and in all marine protected areas by 2030.

Our country also pledged to reduce plastic waste in the sea by 50% and microplastics by 30% by 2030, compared to 2019.