"Helios to the Rescue" – This is what Sascha Müller-Kraenner and Martin Kremer recommend to the economically weak Greeks in their "Internationale Politik" online article of the same title. What makes Greece so especially capable of producing renewable energy and what is preventing progress in this direction? Müller-Kraenner, Advisor of Ecologic Institute, and Kremer, Senior Fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, analyze these issues and caution against passing up timely opportunities for investment and growth.

Generally, Greece fulfills the basic requirements for exploiting renewable energy: The Mediterranean area offers excellent climatic conditions for the production of solar energy, and Greece is geographically nearer and politically more stable than the regions of North Africa. Additionally, the authors mention another convincing and very topical reason: "Contributions toward the targeted renovation of the energy system with sustainable cross-border infrastructure are a better investment than continuous rescue packages […]."

Nevertheless, oil, coal, and gas still constitute the greater part of Greece’s energy mix. According to the authors, the decisive reasons for that are mainly non-economic barriers: infrastructural weaknesses, inefficient bureaucracy, and an outdated grid which hinders easy access to the single European energy market.

Still another open question remains: how to finance the transition towards renewable energy? Müller-Kraenner and Kremer suggest the use of EU structural subsidies, programs of the European Investment Bank, or regroupings within the European research budget.

Sascha Müller-Kraenner is one of the founders and a Partner of Ecologic Institute, Berlin, and Vice-Chairman of the Ecologic Institute in Washington DC. Frequently, he publishes on international relations, European integration, environmental diplomacy, and the United Nation's climate change treaty.

The English translation of this article was published by the German Council on Foreign Relations.