Solar Energy- It’s all Greek to me.

So, stepping away from the back and forth of the U.S. around solar and other renewable energies, let’s take a look at how things are going in Greece. While the EU is certainly a global leader in the way that nations and continents and the U.N. are dealing with climate change and setting policies for renewable energy, apparently things are not going smoothly on the ground. For Greece.

In the wonderfully named town of Megalopolis (if there is one town name I have heard lately that is just begging to be the poster-child or buzzword for the next phase of urban development, at least in English, Megalopolis fits the bill- imaging Greece’s Green Megalopolis… ) well, there is a gigantic Lignite power plant that does as much polluting as anything else on the hills overlooking the city. There is also a proposal to build Greece’s largest solar energy project nearby.

Megalopolians (?-forgive me) say no.

Why? Local hunters are pissed that the site where the solar panel power plant is proposed was supposed to be a forest for hunting. And now it’s not and they are suing. Whoa.

Kostas Markopoulos, President of the Hunters' Association of the Peloponnese, says, "Under no conditions will we accept sacrificing even one tree ... we are not bowing to these interests."

Gotta give it to him on the spin. Arguing in favor of trees is kind of the bread and butter of the environmental movement. Trees vs. Power Plant means fight for the trees. But Trees vs. Solar Power Plant? Can’t he wait a few years and take down the Lignite Power Plant and grow a forest there? Or put the Solar Panels on the Lignite Power Plant? I mean, there has to be a lot of wiggle room to put some solar panels and grow some trees, right?

"A (solar) park here at such a large scale ... would be one large mirror that will drive away wildlife," he told Reuters. "This should be done in other areas, and they exist, that do not destroy the natural environment,” said Markopoulos, leader of the hunters opposition to the project. 

Anything is better than the highly polluting lignite (“brown coal”) plants that stand just down the hill and only 100 meters from the nearest house. And they are arguing over some trees.

Greece is set up for wind and solar power, but the politicians are not really into it and neither are the locals. So, well, not much is happening. This seems like the kind of thing that the U.N. and this Copenhagen summit could step in and make happen. Rather than asking people for money and commitments, they could just look at each country and say, look, you need to build a plant here, here and here. Next year. Then we meet up again in 2014 and talk about how much better you are doing.

As it stands the project would be one of the biggest projects in the world, priced at around $300 million to build.

The Megalopolis government (love it) are passing new zoning laws that will designate renewable zones and are approving incentives for installing solar panels.
The courts have the final word on the whole project, meaning they have to weigh in on the hunters’ appeal.

Regardless, it appears that Greece will move forward with renewable energy in the long term, perhaps to the dismay of hunters, who will have to gather their prey elsewhere.