IN Brief:
- Greece’s Ministry of Environment and Energy has raised the country’s offshore wind target to 2.35GW.
- The decree allocates capacity across Thrace, Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, the Gulf of Euboea, and the Gulf of Patras.
- Transmission connection points have been identified, moving offshore wind planning further into grid delivery.
Greece’s Ministry of Environment and Energy has increased the country’s offshore wind target to 2.35GW and allocated capacity across defined marine development zones.
The revised target is higher than the 1.9GW to 2GW range previously set out in national energy planning. Capacity has been assigned across several regions, including 600MW of pilot projects in Thrace, 250MW off Crete, 500MW in the Dodecanese, 500MW across the Cyclades and Gulf of Euboea, and 200MW in the Gulf of Patras.
The decree also identifies connection points to the transmission network, bringing the electrical system into the centre of offshore wind planning. For offshore projects, seabed conditions and turbine supply are only part of the delivery equation; cable corridors, substations, grid access, and curtailment exposure can determine whether capacity reaches operation on schedule.
Greece’s offshore wind programme is expected to use a mix of support models. Most investors are expected to compete for contracts for difference, while the 600MW pilot projects in Thrace are expected to be eligible for feed-in tariffs.
Survey work will support site characterisation, wind-resource assessment, foundation selection, cable routing, and environmental evaluation. Greece has different offshore conditions from northern European markets, with deeper waters, island systems, seismic considerations, port readiness, and longer transmission distances shaping project design.
The country’s offshore ambitions sit within a wider European build-out in which transmission and offshore grid infrastructure are becoming as important as generation capacity. First power from new offshore projects, cable installation campaigns in the North Sea, and artificial energy islands all reflect the same industrial shift: offshore wind is now planned through ports, vessels, substations, grid hubs, cables, and balancing arrangements.
Floating wind may be required in some Greek zones where water depth limits fixed-bottom development. That brings additional engineering requirements, including mooring systems, dynamic cables, anchoring, floating substructure supply chains, and port assembly capacity. These elements can lengthen development timelines, but they also allow offshore wind to move into deeper waters with stronger resource potential.
The exclusion of a dedicated curtailment protection mechanism means projects are expected to manage curtailment risk alongside other renewable technologies. That places more pressure on grid reinforcement, storage, demand flexibility, and clear market design, because offshore generation must have reliable routes to demand centres.
Connection-point allocation moves the programme from spatial ambition towards electrical planning. Developers need clarity on connection timing, grid access, support scheme structure, and likely curtailment before committing to detailed design and procurement. Transmission operators need comparable certainty to plan substations, cable corridors, reactive power support, protection schemes, and wider reinforcement works.
At 2.35GW, Greece’s target is smaller than the largest North Sea programmes, but it could become significant for south-east Europe. Offshore wind would add a new generation source in a region where island interconnection, cross-border flows, and renewable integration are all becoming more prominent.
The programme now depends on execution: auction design, grid delivery, survey progress, port readiness, and supply-chain capacity. Offshore wind targets are increasingly common across Europe, while bankable grid access remains the harder engineering test.
