ATHENS – Almost two years after wildfires swept Greece’s second-largest island, Evia – and brought conspiracy theories they were set to clear land for wind turbines – Greek petroleum refiner Motor Oil Hellas got approval for wind farms there.

The Ministry of Environment and Energy gave the company a permit for a 79.6 Megawatt project to be developed by Motor Oil’s subsidiary DMX Aeolitic, said business news service provider Newmoney.

https://renewablesnow.com/news/motor-oil-wins-enviro-permit-for-796-mw-wind-farm-in-greece-report-820898/

The project calls for the construction and operation of a complex of six wind farms with individual capacities ranging between 6-29.9 Megawatts, the report said, with installations in Marmaris, Styrai, Karystos and Eretria.

The power plants will be equipped with 32 of Enercon’s E82/2.30 MW turbines and three E82/2.00 MW machines, the largest consisting of 13 turbines, the report said as Greece is seeking more alternative energy sources.

The original project was said to foresee the addition of 102.3 MW of turbine capacity but the project design was changed and some turbines were removed to meet concerns about their location, no response from environmentalists.

In Novermber, 2021, after his New Democracy government became the first to bar development on burned land in Greece, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said areas of Evia ravaged by the fires would be reconstructed.

The northern part of the island that lies some 69 miles northeast of Athens is a preserve of forests and a producer of honey and other products, businesses nearly destroyed by the fires.

Mitsotakis said the plan to restore the island “will comprise a model for a new way to see holistic development” there after the government disputed critics who said the fires would lead to more wind power towers being put there.

Mitsotakis spoke at the presentation of the third phase of the plan, where Stavros Benos, head of the reconstruction committee, presented outlines of 14 studies aimed at restoring areas of the island.

The cost for the studies will be assumed entirely by the private sector and was supposed to have been done by September 2022, he said, the projects partially subsidized by the European Union.

They included plans for reforestation, infrastructure, cultural development, agricultural production, social networks, tourism and demographics and city plans for the municipalities of Istiaia-Edipsos and Mantoudi-Limni-Agia Anna.

But the work has been lagging with Olive Oil Times reporting that according to the progress report of the reconstruction program, 30 of the 71 sub-projects are underway, with delays in helping some oil producers.

The hundreds of wildfires that swept across Greece in the summer of 2021 were either deliberately set or somehow tied to companies wanting to put up more turbines, including on islands, most Greeks believed then.

That came in a poll conducted for the Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Ministry by the Athens think tank diANEOsis and Metron Analysis which found found 70 percent of respondents said the fires were the result of arson and more than half thinking it was done to get more wind turbines installed.