Greece on June 5 unveiled the legal framework and tax incentives to promote the use of electric cars, motorcycles and bicycles, as part of its 10-year climate plan for lower carbon emissions. Greece now has only about 1,000 electric cars - 0.3% of its fleet - on its roads, a very low rate compared to other EU countries, such as Germany, where they account for about 10% of the fleet. Presenting the country’s plan for moving to low-carbon mobility, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that Athens will aim for one in three new vehicles to be electric by 2030. "We are subsidising the purchase of new types of cars with 100 million euros for 18 months at the first stage,” Mitsotakis said. "This is expected to cover 25% of the cost for about 14,000 new electric cars.” The plan also includes subsidies for the purchase of electric taxis and motorbikes and for setting up charging stations across the country. Drivers of the new vehicles will be also exempted from any parking fees for two years.
A recent study showed that carbon emissions dropped by about 40% in Athens amid a coronavirus-prompted lockdown from March to April as most Greeks stopped commuting by car. To meet EU-wide climate targets by 2030, Greece has also vowed to close down all but one of its coal-fired electricity plants by 2023. The plants use lignite, a highly pollutant brown coal. Most of them operate in northern Greece and the southern Peloponnese. Mitsotakis announced tax breaks for new factories that will produce electric cars in those regions.
The government has been keen to promote electric vehicles as part of a broader push for environmentally friendly policies as the cars on Greece’s roads are among the oldest in Europe.
The average of a car in Greece is 15.5 years, putting the country fourth from the bottom of the list of 27 European Union member -states, ahead of Romania, Lithuania and Latvia. The average car age in the EU is 11 years.
Greece is in the same spot, fourth from last, among its EU peers when it comes to sales of low-emissions vehicles, with a rate of 0.5 per 1,000 residents, just ahead of Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania.
According to government projections, between, 4,500 and 5,000 electric cars will be o Greek roads by next year. The aim is for one in three cars sold in Greece by 2030 to be electric.
The IENE Study
In May 2018 IENE completed a major multiclient study on the Prospects of the Electric Vehicle Market in Greece and SE Europe. Several of the measures, incentives and technical features adopted by the Greek government in its latest drive to promote electric vehicles had been analysed and proposed in the above IENE study (https://www.iene.eu/iene-completed-major-study-on-electric-vehicle-market-p4298.html, https://www.iene.gr/articlefiles/working%20paper%20no%2024.pdf)
