As Greece races to expand renewable energy, can the island of Kythira be transformed into a wind power hub -- with 30 turbines planned in a protected zone -- against the will of its residents?
7/8/2025 UPDATE: In a major development, Greece’s Ministry of Environment and Energy officially signed off, on August 1, 2025, on the long-pending approval of the 2023 Special Environmental Study that had already concluded industrial wind farms should be prohibited within the terrestrial Natura 2000 zones of Kythira. This long-overdue approval effectively cancels 21 of the 30 turbines planned by TERNA Energy. Updated maps reflecting the decision are expected to be published on the Ministry’s website. While a Presidential Decree is still required to make the protections fully binding, the move marks a significant step forward for opponents of the project.
On the island of Kythira, where rugged cliffs meet turquoise waters and migratory birds soar overhead, the future of Greece’s green transition is colliding with local resistance.
With just under 4,000 permanent residents, Kythira is sparsely populated but ecologically rich. Large parts of Kythira fall within Natura 2000 protected zones, including habitats that serve as a critical stopover for thousands of migratory birds. Now, it’s also the site of a highly controversial energy project: the construction of three wind farms, totaling 30 turbines and a combined capacity of 132 megawatts, spearheaded by TERNA Energy, one of Greece’s largest renewable energy firms.
To its backers, the project represents progress–part of Greece’s urgent push to increase renewable energy production. To many residents, it is something else entirely: the industrialization of a fragile island ecosystem, carried out without their consent.
Owing to its distinct topography, Kythira is more than a picturesque island; it’s a prime target for wind energy development.
The island sits at the crossroads of strong, consistent air currents, with average wind speeds of 9 to 10 meters per second. That alone makes it attractive to renewable energy investors. But what makes Kythira especially strategic is its proximity to the Peloponnese peninsula on the Greek mainland—just a few nautical miles from Neapoli and the nearby island of Elafonisos—significantly reducing the cost of connecting to the mainland power grid.
These factors have pushed the island to the forefront of Greece’s renewable energy expansion. But not without controversy.
Local officials, residents, and environmental organizations argue that the island’s value lies not in its energy output but in its ecological and cultural heritage. Kythira is one of only four officially recognized migratory “bottlenecks” in Greece–a vital passage for thousands of birds, including birds of prey such as the rare Eleonora’s falcon (Falco eleonorae), which crosses the island during seasonal migrations.
Despite this, the energy company TERNA Energy is moving forward with plans for a large-scale project: 30 wind turbines spread across three wind farms. Of those, 21 are slated to be built inside the boundaries of Natura 2000 protected zones. Much of the construction–including roads, turbine foundations, and a loading dock at an untouched beach–will take place in areas that environmental groups say should be off-limits.
As concerns mount over the ecological consequences, critics are also pointing to irregularities in the permitting process, and to what they see as structural contradictions in the broader regulatory framework surrounding renewable energy development in Greece.
In 2020, Greece passed Law 4685–known as the “Hatzidakis Law”–to fast-track renewable energy investments. Under its provisions, wind turbines can, in some cases, be licensed even inside Natura 2000 zones, so long as formal Presidential Decrees outlining special protection measures have not yet been issued.
These decrees are meant to be based on Special Environmental Studies (SES) that define what activities are allowed within each protected area. Until both the study is approved and the Presidential Decree is enacted, the area technically lacks a binding legal protection status–even if it is environmentally sensitive.
In the case of Kythira, a SES was issued by the Ministry of Environment and Energy in May 2023. It explicitly prohibits the installation of wind turbines in the areas under review. That study completed its consultation phase in October 2023, but more than 18 months later, it still has not been formally enacted.
If construction begins before the Special Environmental Study (SES) is formally approved, Kythira risks an institutional deadlock: turbines erected now could later be outlawed – first by the Presidential Decree that will stem from the SES, and again by the island’s local urban plan.The Kythira Local Development plan, already drafted and backed by both the municipal majority and main opposition, endorses only small-scale renewable projects and explicitly rejects turning the island into an industrial energy hub.
Terna’s wind power project on Kythira, is among the most ambitious developments currently underway in the southern aegea, with a combined capacity to generate 132 megawatts–enough to supply electricity far beyond the island’s own needs.
The construction footprint is equally large. Nearly 33 kilometers of road will be built or expanded, and each turbine will require clearing around 5,000 square meters of land.
Much of the proposed construction, including two of the three wind farm sites, falls within or directly adjacent to Special Protection Areas (SPAs) under Natura 2000. The entire project area also lies within the Important Bird Area “Kythira Island”, recognized by BirdLife International, the world’s largest conservation alliance.
Getting the equipment to the island presents another challenge. Turbine parts will be shipped from mainland ports and offloaded at Routsounas, a remote beach on Kythira’s northwestern tip. To make that possible, TERNA plans to build a temporary loading platform on the shore.
But Routsonas is not an ordinary beach. It received the highly protected designation of “untouched beach” in [2024?]–a status meant to safeguard Greece’s most pristine coastal zones. For critics, the decision to use it as an industrial staging point encapsulates the contradictions at the heart of the project.
For a project of this scale — located inside protected zones, in an area known for its biodiversity — experts say the bar for environmental due diligence should be especially high. Instead, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) submitted by TERNA Energy has raised red flags among scientists, conservationists, and legal experts.
One of the central concerns: the study appears to be missing critical data. According to Apostolis Kaltsis, Conservation & Policy Officer at the Hellenic Ornithological Society (HOS) and one of the authors of the HOS report on wind farms in protected areas, the field recordings included in the EIA fail to cover key biological periods, such as breeding and migration seasons.
Worse, says Kaltsis, no ornithologist was listed on the study team.
The study, he told Solomon “ignores publicly available data from the Ornithological Society.” Greece has already been condemned by the EU’s Court of Justice for failing to adequately protect Important Bird Areas (IBAs) under the Natura 2000 framework.
Environmental lawyer George Balias, a professor in the Department of Geography of Harokopou University, has been commissioned by the municipality of Kythira to draft an expert report on the project, which will be submitted as part of the official permitting process. He says the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA submitted by TERNA contains serious omissions, especially regarding Natura 2000 zones.
“The investor’s Special Ecological Assessment has significant gaps,” he told Solomon, “it does not adequately document the impacts on Special Protection Areas (SPAs), which play a critical role in bird migration corridors.”
According to Balias, the SPA covering Kythira and its surrounding islets is one of the most sensitive in Greece. Its superficial treatment in the study, he says, reflects not only a scientific shortfall, but a serious institutional failing.
As concerns about the project’s ecological impact mounted, another issue drew scrutiny from Kythira’s residents: the academic qualifications of one of the researchers who signed off on TERNA Energy’s EIA.
According to the project file, the researcher’s official accreditation had expired in January 2024–months before the EIA was submitted. That raised a pointed question: was the competent authority now being asked to evaluate an environmental study that no longer met the formal criteria for validity?
The government’s solution came not from the Ministry of Environment but through an unrelated piece of legislation: a last-minute amendment tucked into a recent traffic law bill extended the validity of all research accreditations through December 31, 2025, retroactively covering the lapse and allowing affected researchers to reapply for certification.
To residents and critics, the maneuver has only deepened mistrust around the project, and fed suspicions that regulatory safeguards are being bent to accommodate investor timelines.
Another source of concern for Kythira’s residents is how close the planned wind turbines will be to homes and settlements.
Some homes near the planned turbines–like those in Xerokambia–are just 240 meters away. That’s legal under Greek law, which sets no fixed distance for isolated residences, so long as noise stays under 45 decibels.
But critics say the way that noise was measured—using the dB(A) scale—may underestimate the real impact. This method filters out low-frequency sounds, such as infrasound from turbines, which studies have linked to headaches, insomnia, and stress.
Acoustics expert Ioannis Antoniadis told Solomon the dB(A) scale can reduce measured values by up to 31 times. He said this approach might not fully reflect the potential health risks to nearby residents.
According to Antoniadis, using only the dB(A) scale may not give a complete picture of the potential health risks to nearby residents.
A closer look at Annex VII of the EIA–the section that presents final noise dispersion measurements–raises further concerns. This annex should clearly document projected turbine noise levels, especially for homes nearby. Instead, the text appears garbled: the lettering is distorted or misformatted to the point that individual words are impossible to read. Yet, the document was accepted by the Ministry, leaving unanswered questions about how thoroughly the data was reviewed.
Even as the project’s legal footprint remains uncertain, its financial and geopolitical weight has grown.
In June 2024, TERNA Energy was acquired by Masdar, a state-owned energy company based in the United Arab Emirates. The deal, valued at €2.4 billion (or €3.2 billion including debt), was the largest energy-sector transaction in the history of the Athens Stock Exchange, and one of the biggest in Europe’s renewables market that year.
Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company PJSC) is backed by three major state-owned entities: TAQA (energy and water), ADNOC (oil and gas), and Mubadala Investment Company (Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund).
The acquisition positioned Masdar to play a leading role in Greece’s green transition—and raised eyebrows among those already skeptical of the project’s scale, legality, and environmental impact.
In Greek business circles, Mubadala is remembered for its troubled investment in Avramar, the country’s largest aquaculture company, as revealed by Solomon in 2023.
According to a statement from the Greek embassy in Abu Dubai, the TERNA deal is part of a broader commitment by the UAE to invest up to €4 billion in Greece. Prior to the acquisition, Masdar had already entered the Greek market through projects like the transformation of Poros into a “green island,” the development of offshore wind farms in collaboration with Motor Oil, and a preliminary agreement with the Copelouzos Group to develop renewable energy projects in Egypt–energy that would eventually be exported to Greece and Europe via the Greece-Egypt electrical interconnection project (GREGY).
Until the Masdar deal, TERNA Energy operated as a subsidiary of GEK TERNA, a major Greek conglomerate with interests in infrastructure, power, concessions, and waste management. The company’s largest shareholder (31.33%) is Greek businessman Georgios Peristeris; the remaining shares are held by institutional investors in Greece and abroad.
The Kythira project falls under one of TERNA’s many subsidiaries: TERNA Energy S.A. – Vector Wind Parks Greece Troulos Wind Park OE, in which TERNA holds a 90% stake and Vector Wind Parks Greece S.A. owns the remaining 10%. The listed CEO is Elias Kefalas.
Under Greece’s updated National Energy and Climate Plan, presented in August 2024, the government aims for renewable energy sources (RES) to contribute 75.9% of electricity generation and 42.8% of total energy consumption by 2030.
But the wind turbines planned for Kythira won’t power the island. The electricity generated is intended for the national grid, with the potential for export to other countries.
That disconnect–between large-scale development and local benefit–is central to the resistance.
“We’re not saying no to renewable energy sources,” says Charalambos Sougiannis, president of the Kythira Energy Community. “We’re saying no–and we’re resisting, with arguments–to the industrial monstrosities they’re trying to install on our island.
As objections mount on Kythira, the project’s future may hinge on a final review by NECCA, Greece’s Natural Environment and Climate Change Agency–the state body responsible for assessing environmental impact studies for protected areas.
The issue has already sparked cross-party concern in Parliament, with interventions from PASOK – Movement for Change , SYRIZA – Progressive Alliance and the New Left . On June 23, 2025, Deputy Minister of Environment and Energy Nikolaos Tsafos responded to a parliamentary question from New Left MP Nasos Iliopoulos, saying:
“We’re talking about a process that has various levels of evaluation – it’s both the examination process and NECCA’s estimation, which we will obviously take into account in the next steps for this project.”
Tsafos did not address specific questions, including whether the process would be suspended until the Special Environmental Study is officially approved.
According to information obtained by Solomon, NECCA’s final assessment of the project is expected in the coming days. Under the current legal framework, NECCA’s opinion is binding for the Ministry of Environment and Energy.
In a letter to NECCA, Stratos Charchalakis, the mayor of Kythira, urged the agency to act in defense of the island’s legal and ecological integrity:
“We categorically reject any proposal to install such pharaonic projects in our region. We prohibit any intervention on properties and land that fall under the Domestically-Owned Property of Kythira, and to that end, we will exhaust every legal and other lawful avenue at the national and European level,” reads the letter from Charchalakis.
The Kythira Energy Community’s president Charalambos Sougiannis, too, was clear about what’s at stake, telling Solomon that if the Ministry of Environment and Energy approves this facility “they should be renamed the Ministry of Energy.”
And if that approval comes, he added, the community is ready: “We will defend our land by all means, so that it remains a place of life, culture, and sustainable vision.”
“Residents, old and young, feel that we have a sacred duty to protect our island from the mistakes of state incompetence and reject profit-mongering projects that do show no respect for this land,” he said.
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