Description
Summary
The action of the European Union in the Greece financial crisis so far has mainly been motivated by saving of the euro and European banks.
Solidarity towards Greece people has been lower in the priorities.
What Greece would need for the moment is not so much a bailout of European banks, but jobs and investments. My proposal suggest to do this with investments in renewable energy.
Greece would provide a large job force in need of employment and land with good availability of sunlight and wind, the European Union trough its investment bank, and IMF should provide the funding needed to build wind power and solar power plants.
Greece would receive much needed investments and jobs, EU and IMF would receive back payments with clean energy.
The size of the benefits to Greece depends on the amount of renewable energy that is installed.
For a minimum estimate, I use an case study from Northern Sweden of a planned wind turbine installation project of 4 GW. As there is currently no wind turbine manufacturing taking place in the area, it serves as a low estimate with only installation and operation providing jobs. During the 8 construction years it would provide annually on average 520 new jobs, out of which 95 trough indirect and induced effects. If the towers and blades would be also constructed locally, the annual jobs would increase to 1240. The operating phase would provide annually around 70 new jobs. A modest benefit-sharing, where 1.25 percent of the revenues were assumed to finance expansions in the education sector and in construction projects would create on average 30 additional jobs, while 10 percent would provide 195 additional jobs.
Five such wind power parks would thus create 2 600 to 6 200 jobs in the installation phase, and 350 to 1 325 new jobs.
Assuming similar investments in other forms of renewables, like bioenergy, geothermal, and solar energy, it would be thus possible to create tens of thousands new jobs, at least in the installation phase.
5 * 4 GW of installed wind turbine capacity alone would produce up to 50 TWh on electricity, replacing preferably electricity generation by coal.
Which proposals are included in your plan and how do they fit together?
Fulfilling the plan would make Greece a test laboratory for renewable energy, thus in theory all plans in Europe: Energy Supply Sector Plan Workspace could be included if the where any plans there.
In fact all plans in the whole Climate CoLab suggesting various form of renewable energy could be included. For example:
https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/planId/1309208
Greece the home of the Olympic game could provide the arena for an contest in producing the most silent and effective windmills, or most cost and space effective solar power plants in a similar vein as the reforestation Olympics. https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1302025/planId/1321820
Explanation of the emissions scenario calculated in the Impact tab
What are the plan’s key benefits?
The size of the benefits to Greece depends on the amount of renewable energy that is installed. At best tens of thousands of annual jobs could be created, while replacing fossil fuels in electricity production in Greece our other parts of Europe trough exports.
What are the plan’s costs?
Less than the collapse of Greece.
What are the key challenges to enacting this plan?
Sticking to old remedies that have already proven not to work.
Timeline
Greence need help now, and we also need immediate action on climate change.
Related plans
References
Thomas Ejdemo, Patrik Söderholm, Wind power, regional development and benefit-sharing: The case of Northern Sweden, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, Vol. 47, 2015, p. 476–485.
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