Crisis - WWF CrisisWatch

New lignite plant canceled in major NGO court win

A major Greek court ruling has put the final nail in the coffin for planned power plant Meliti II, and left its sister plant Meliti I operating without legal permission. The decision follows a legal challenge brought, WWF Greece and Greenpeace Greece, by ClientEarth. Greece’s supreme administrative court, the Greek Council of State, has annulled the environmental permits for the two lignite-fired power plants, both property of state power comp...

Greece commits to phase out lignite

The commitments announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the UN Climate Action Summit, that Greece will shut down all lignite power plants by 2028 and ban single-use plastics by 2021, are welcomed by WWF Greece as bold steps towards reducing the country’s environmental footprint. For Greece, the phase out of lignite needs to be part of a broader ambitious decarbonisation plan, with one clear goal - zero net emissions by 2040 at the...

Oil and gas frenzy threatens Greek nature

Imagine a world where drilling thousands of shotholes for the use of explosives in protected areas, vegetation clearing, opening of roads, and near lethal disturbance of protected animals at sea is not subject to the appropriate assessment of environmental impacts. This is modern day Greece, allowing an unprecedented rollback on established legal protections, in favour of drilling for oil and gas.During the economic crisis, cash strapped Greece h...

WWF: International effort to halt oil and gas drilling in Greek seas

GLAND, Switzerland, 11th February 2019 – WWF today published a report on the ‘Economic impacts of hydrocarbon exploitation in Greece’ as part of the launch of its international campaign to halt oil and gas drilling plans in the country. The study, commissioned by WWF and conducted by eftec, finds that a major oil spill in Greece would devastate the country’s tourism and fishing industries, and cost the Greek economy more than 7.5 billion...

EU Commission pushes Greece for new coal

WWF & Greenpeace address EU Commissioners on the opening of Greece’s lignite market The big lignite sale now happening in Greece, under supervision and pressure by the European Commission, prolongs the country’s dependence on dirty coal and negates the EU’s policies for coal phase-out. Under the umbrella of antitrust EU rules, the European Commission has been pushing Greece to regulate the sale of PPC coal plants and mines, a proces...

Greece: Report reveals environmental signals of rollback and signs of hope

A year marked by Greece’s addiction to fossil fuels has resulted in seriously undermining the country’s system of environmental protection, according to WWF Greece. The 14th annual report of WWF Greece “Environmental law in Greece”, which was published in December 2018 (in Greek), highlights a number of serious shortcomings and rollbacks on environmental legislation, but also important wins that spark hope for 2019. Alarm for environmen...

Greece’s growth strategy: presented to the Eurogroup but covered in secrecy

At the Eurogroup meeting of April 27, Greece presented its “comprehensive growth strategy, outlining goals and priorities for the coming years”. No draft of the national growth strategy, which aims to “to boost Greece's long-term growth potential and enhance the investment climate” after the end of financial assistance programmes, was ever made officially available to the public for comments and consultation. WWF firmly believes that dem...

Hydrocarbon frenzy in Greece

Iconic and ecologically sensitive marine and coastal areas are at serious risk by the ongoing oil and gas exploitation frenzy currently pushed by the Greek Government. Last week, Environment and Energy Minister Giorgos Stathakis submitted to Parliament for approval three bills ratifying contracts for hydrocarbon research and extraction in the offshore block 2 of the Ionian Sea, and the onshore blocks of Aetoloarkanania, Arta-Preveza and NW Pelop...

EU pushes Greece towards longer coal dependence

In a letter to the representatives of the institutions supervising Greece’s economy, WWF Greece raises serious concerns that the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund push the cash-strapped country towards further expanding its dependency on lignite. In the letter dated 10 November 2017, WWF Greece’s CEO Demetres Karavellas expresses “deep concern about the obligatory sale of the 40% of the Public Power Corporation’s (PP...

Survey: Europeans want more EU action on environmental protection

Two-thirds of EU citizens would like the European Union to intervene more than at present in order to protect the environment, according to a Eurobarometer Survey for the European Parliament issued in April 2017. In this survey, the environment ranks third in the list of areas calling for more EU action, after terrorism and unemployment. In the same survey of 2016, the environment featured in the sixth position. Despite the economic crisis an...