Greek gas supplier DEPA signs deal to build power plant in Larissa
ATHENS, May 21 (Reuters) - Greek gas supplier DEPA Commercial has signed an agreement for a 600 million-euro ($680 million) project to build a gas-fired power plant in Larissa, it said on Wednesday.
Cyprus-based company Clavenia, which is owned by an Israeli real estate group, and two Greek companies, energy and telecommunications provider Volton and private equity EUSIF Larissa, will participate in the project.
The 792 MW power plant has received all necessary permits and will be built in the industrial area of Larissa, in the central part of the country, DEPA said in the statement
It will be built with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries technology.
"This is a new natural gas-fired electricity production unit. A unit that will create new jobs, strengthen competition and lead to lower electricity prices for consumers," Greece's Minister for Environment and Energy Stavros Papastavrou said.
Greece has ramped up renewables output from sun and wind for power generation as it aims to shut down all its coal-fired plants by next year. It still, however, relies heavily on gas imports for electricity.
($1 = 0.8820 euros)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
Reform-linked thinktank hires YouTube star in policy and PR push
A YouTube star has been hired by a thinktank supportive of Reform UK as it looks to strengthen Nigel Farage's policy agenda, Sky News can reveal. Archie Manners, a comedian and magician who has performed high-profile pranks on celebrities and Just Stop Oil activists, has been hired by Resolute 1850, which is planning to change its name to The Centre for a Better Britain. It is understood the 32-year-old, whose YouTube channel with fellow influencer Josh Pieters amassed more than one million subscribers, has been hired full-time and will provide social media and communications advice. The hiring of Mr Manners, who worked for Mr Farage during the general election campaign, indicates Reform is hoping to expand its already significant reach with young men. While most of Reform's supporters are still older white men, post-election analysis by YouGov found Reform was the third most popular choice for men aged 18-24, alongside the Green Party. Reform has also been quick to engage with social media platforms, including TikTok, which are popular with Gen Z. The party now boasts nearly 400,000 followers - more than any other major political party - while Mr Farage's own personal TikTok now has over a million followers. While independent of Reform, Resolute 1850 has strong links to the party through leading figures, including Jonathan Brown - the thinktank's chief executive and former Reform chief operations officer - who will also seek to raise funds through UK, and possibly, US donors. In its first guise as Resolute 1850 - which the Financial Times reported is a reference to the HMS Resolute Royal Navy ship whose timbers were used to make the US president's desk in the Oval Office - the thinktank said its mission was to "foster stronger transatlantic relationships and more effective governance". Mr Brown told Sky News that Resolute 1850, which is due to launch formally by the autumn, was changing its name to the Centre for a Better Britain because "we wanted to be clear on what it did on the tin". "What we hope to do is set a policy agenda for the centre right which acknowledges the dire financial state the country is in and the errors that have been made around net zero and pretty much every policy the Labour Party and the Conservative Party are pushing forward, and actually have a desire for a radical break with the consensus of the last 20 years," he added. "Our desire is to build up a proper policy base and not be fixated on culture war issues - but to actually look at proper economic fiscal policy, foreign affairs and defence. "There's been a lot of enthusiasm around it." Mr Brown sought to downplay comparisons between his outfit and equivalent US thinktanks that are independent but supportive of US President Donald Trump, saying the UK had its "own challenges and political climate". He said calling Resolute 1850 a British version of MAGA (Make America Great Again) was "easy" but that he "disagreed" with the comparison. 2:22 "The idea that we are some sort of UK branch of a US organisation is not true," he said. "We are independent." Mr Brown added that Resolute 1850 currently had no US donors and that most of its fundraising - understood to be in the region of £1m - had been secured domestically, but that he was open to donations from across the Atlantic. Rumours of US donations to Reform began circulating last year when it was reported that Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and X, who has just left his role at the White House, was considering offering $100m (about £80m) to the party. However, the donation has not materialised and the relationship between Mr Farage and Mr Musk appears to have fractured after the tech tycoon called for Rupert Lowe, the ousted Reform MP, to replace Mr Farage as leader. The impending launch of the Centre for a Better Britain comes as Mr Farage looks to build his policy platform following his success at the May local elections, where Reform won control of 10 councils and picked up more than 670 councillors. At a speech on Tuesday, the Reform leader vowed to reverse cuts to winter fuel payments and scrap the two-child benefit cap while also outlining his ambition to increase the personal allowance from the current £12,750 to £20,000 year - something the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggest could cost between £50bn to £80bn a year. Mr Farage has argued such policies can be paid for through scrapping net zero commitments and by ending the use of asylum hotels - but Sir Keir Starmer said they would be "Liz Truss all over again". "He set out economic plans which contain billions upon billions of completely unfunded spending," the prime minister said last Thursday. "Precisely the sort of irresponsible splurge that sent your mortgage costs, your bills and the cost of living through the roof."
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Robotics firm raises $60 million to scale up wind turbine repairs
LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - Latvian tech company Aerones, which counts GE and Enel among its customers, has raised $62 million to fund a global roll out of robots and other AI-enabled solutions to protect and maintain thousands of wind turbines in over 30 countries, its CEO told Reuters. Wind power accounts for almost 10% of the world's energy generation and is growing rapidly but the majority of turbines are still maintained by hand, causing days-long blackout periods which cost energy companies and turbine operators huge sums. Aerones' robots can maintain and service vast wind-turbine blades in a minimum of half the time it takes for humans to do so, providing an efficient, safe and cost-effective solution for growth, its co-founder and CEO Dainis Kruze said. "The industry is scaling really fast and maintenance is tough," he said. "The wind turbine downtime costs more than the labour itself and that bottleneck is driving up the cost of renewable energy." "We don't wait until the blade is already on the ground but work out how to prevent that blade from falling to the ground," he said. The equity funding round was led by U.S. investors Activate Capital and S2G Investments. Aerones is also backed by a 4 million euro grant from the EU Innovation Fund and an additional 30 million euro funding round in 2023. Aerones is scaling rapidly in United States so it was important to bring on U.S. partners this time, Kruze said. The firm last year opened an office in Dallas, Texas and is hiring and training local people. The company plans to return to the market to raise around $15 million to $20 million of venture debt later this year, Kruze said. Since 2020, Aerones has enabled nearly 400,000 MWh of additional clean electricity and helped avoid 165,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, the company said in a statement.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Dover 24/7: Britain's Busiest Port - From spies to three million bananas, it's all in a day's work
Dover 24/7: Britain's Busiest Port (Ch4) Talk about a logistical nightmare. The business of keeping our supermarkets stocked with bananas is enough to drive anyone . . . well, round the bend. A single consignment of fruit from Ecuador can consist of three million bananas packed onto nearly 700 pallets. They arrive in the UK on a 140,000-ton container vessel so huge that it takes four nautical miles to slow down. Once in dock, cargo operations manager Rob supervises two remote-control cranes that do the unloading. Andy oversees their delivery to two vast ware-houses. Kev checks every pallet for damage. And another Andy ensures the bananas are kept at exactly 14°C, to prevent them from ripening too soon. This entertaining portrait of efficient teamwork, in Dover 24/7: Britain's Busiest Port, reminded me of those short information films that used to run before the main feature at Saturday morning cinema shows. The marvellous Talking Pictures TV channel (Freeview 82) airs one of these most days, a glimpse of postwar Britain under the Look At Life banner. Several are available on their website too, including one from 1967 called The Hidden Strength. The first five minutes depict the Port of London at work — a very different business to the one in Ch4's Dover documentary. One of the crates we see unloaded belongs to the Hudson's Bay Company, laden with furs from Canada. These join more pelts from Africa and Russia — including leopard and tiger skins, all to be sold at auction. At the London Commodity Exchange, brokers trade in cocoa, ginger, spices, rubber and sugar, as well as ivory tusks, ostrich feathers and ambergris — a fragrant wax from the stomach of sperm whales. When we hark back to 1967 now, we might think of the Summer of Love and Sgt Pepper, or perhaps LSD and the decriminalisation of gay sex. It's fascinating to see a different reality: mountains of big cat furs and the byproducts of the whaling industry. Maybe in 60 years or so, the port activity in Dover will seem equally alien. Which bits will date fastest is hard to guess, though perhaps it will be coppers Mark and Joe on their rounds, checking the clifftops for spies on surveillance missions. We didn't see them nick any foreign agents, but they did find one bloke gathering elderflowers for his homemade wine. Even in 1967, that didn't count as a major crime. Back on the dockside, they dealt with a Romanian man with seven passengers in a five-seater car. Barred from boarding a ferry, he was ordered to turn around and head back with half his family to his home in Birmingham — with a friend coming to transport the rest. You might wonder why, when nearly 1,200 people arrived on the south coast via overladen dinghies on Saturday, we can't allow a Romanian family to travel in the opposite direction, simply because their car is a bit crowded. I've given up trying to make sense of these rules. It's all bananas.
