Mr. MITSOTAKIS:
Well, we are extremely of the green deal, and I am happy that it is an ambitious plan, as the Vice President said, it is a plan that is all encompassing, it doesn’t just look at one particular sector.
And what I like is that it units Europe towards a new extremely important cause. If you look at the history of European integration since Europe as a united entity was first created, we always put, you know, very ambitious targets and work towards them. Our fathers, our grandfathers created the European Economic Community at the time, to ensure prosperity and peace for the continent.
The euro was the next important milestone, it was more about financial robustness, but what is the cause that we can actually unite a new generation of young Europeans to work towards?
It has to be climate in conjunction with technological disruption. These are the two big challenges that we have to face.
So this is a very, very ambitious plan, we supported it from day 1. It is particular important for Greece, why? Because all climate models tell us that the eastern Mediterranean is going to be particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Now, this is nothing new. I remember, we look at the horrible fires in Australia, but we had mega-fires in Greece too. The first mega-fire that I remember in Greece, I was chairman of the Environment Committee in 2007, and at the time we commissioned about implications of climate change in Greece and we almost lost a decade. So we cannot afford to lose another decade when we address these issues.
We are a costal nation, our tourism, 90% of our tourism infrastructure is on costs, our particular sensitive ecosystems, our marine ecosystems.
So we have an additional reason to deeply care about this problem and this is not a problem that we will be faced in the future, it is already here, we see it in Greece, and we have to work towards a very ambitious agenda.
I am very happy that the Commission has proposed it to that extent, I think it has been very well received across political families in Europe.
But of course the real difficulties are going to come once we start committing real money to it because then there is a question of budget, can we still do the same policies at the European Union as always done very well, cohesion, common agricultural policy and have additional funds for climate and technology.
And of course the disruption that some of the difficult decisions that we will have to take will entail for local communities.
I am sure we will discuss this as we move into our discussion, but it is nice to have young people engaged in this topic, but we also have to address people who will lose their jobs as a result of us quickly moving away from our fossil fuel intensive production model.
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Mr. MITSOTAKIS:
Well, for those of you who do not know, lignite is brown coal, it is the dirtiest form of coal and, for literally 70 years, Greece has growth and cheap electricity was fuelled by essentially one valley in Northern Greece, that provided all the lignite that we ever needed.
We reached the point where we have to take important and pretty drastic decisions. We are doing it not just to comply with the targets that we have set at the European level, we also do it because burning brown coal in inefficient plants doesn’t make economic sense any longer.
So, we have taken the decision to shut down all our lignite-fired plants by 2028, we will shut all of them but one, which is a new one we inherited, it is in the process of being completed by 2023. And of course, we are rapidly moving towards natural gas and renewables, natural gas as the obvious transition fuel, and then a much heavier push into renewables to balance out our energy mix.
Now, the politics. It was one of those decisions which were taken and announced without, I want to be very honest, without a significant degree of public consultation, because I felt that, as a new Prime Minister, I need to set the bar very high.
Surprisingly, even in regions which are directly affected, there is concern, but there was not, you know, a completely negative reaction, because I think people even on the ground, understand that they also have to change, we were discussing with funds before, do you want, would your kids want to work in a coal mine? Probably not if you can offer them a better job they would probably prefer that.
So the real challenge is, OK, how do we take a region that is very dependent on energy production in terms of jobs and offer these people reasonable alternatives.
That is where the European Union kicks in with transition fund, which aims to mobilize significant amount of capital to help whith this transition.
And what I basically told my colleagues is: look the countries that step up to the plate, we have 30 coal producing regions in the European Union, those who make the change at a much quicker pace should be rewarded, and my intention is to be at the beginning of the queue and not at the end because we always know that European funds are relatively financed.
So we are sending a very clear signal on that fund. Of course our strategy CO2 reduction strategy is not limited just to that, we have a very ambitious retrofeeding program for public but also private homes, because our homes are still relatively old and there is tremendous efficiency that you can get by upgrating your buildings, better insulation, better heating, better cooling.
We are giving financial incentives and I think we have very good European programs that are extremely well in Greece, a lot of interest of people upgrading their homes, as the real estate markets is also picking up there is more interest in investing in your properties.
We have gone to hotels and told them something relatively simple. We will give you some additional square meters in terms of your public spaces, in terms of building right, if you upgrade your infrastructure in terms of energy efficiency, so we are essentially monetizing the transition without us actually paying money.
So we have a very broad agenda to reduce CO2, but energy production is going to be particularly important, and as we map, and as the green deal is mapping our path towards carbon neutrality, we all knew which sources of energy production are going to be important, natural gas is very important in the medium turn, and renewables, very important from day one.
Big question mark is, you know, what do we do with more innovative technologies, hydrogen, whether we have a hydrogen strategy as a European Union, it is another topic, I think, of great interest. But, I think sometimes, you have to set the bar high, and then engage people, rather than having everything come out of a public consultation process.
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Mr. MITSOTAKIS:
I think we need more, on a domestic level, we clearly need broader public discourse about the importance of the policies that we are proposing. One interesting thing in Greece, is that we do not have a green party, or if it exists, it is insignificant politically, so I think it is an opportunity certainly for the party that I represent, which is liberal center right party, to explain why you can do ambitious climate policy in a reasonable way, without exaggerating on the one or the other end.
So, as far as the targets that we have set, you need very specific milestones, otherwise there is no way you can reach your targets, so we have come up with national strategy on energy and climate that has very specific targets that we hope we will able to meet and that is what we will be submitting to the European Union.
But I think this is also an opportunity to get input from other thought leaders. It is a great privilege and honour for me to see in the audience, his Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, who has been a thought leader on green issues way, way before this problem was actually acknowledged, and I think, adding a deeply spiritual dimension to this debate, not just looking at it from the point of view of cost benefit, whether we look at it as an insurance policy against a terrible future, or just as an opportunity, but adding a moral dimension to this discussion could only do us good.
So, let’s open it up to people who will not necessarily consider to be part of the, maybe, of the Davos entourage, and I am not just talking about, you know, your climate activists who sometimes, raise the bar so high, that it is just impossible to reach it.
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Mr. MHTSOTAKIS:
We will have this discussion very soon at the European level, because we are discussing the next multiannual financial framework and then we will have to decide whether we can do agricultural cohesion and climate at the same time.
And agriculture is important, because those are the people who will be left behind, if you don’t support them, so you cannot lose them.
At the same time, you need clearly some more money to do the more ambitious climate policies on that front. So, my dear friend Mark, this is certainly going to be a very interesting discussion at the Council.
Mr. RUTTE:
It’s going to be a small part of it.
Mr. MHTSOTAKIS:
No, but it is an indication of commitment to the private sector.
