On Omonia, RES, taxes, sovereignty, the eurozone

Wonderful. This is the first positive thing that I have heard out of Greece in a long time. One, it helps change the dynamics of Omonia. Second, it provides students with good housing at a reasonable rate. Third, it gives parents a feeling of security for their sons and daughters who are attending the university and other colleges in Athens. I congratulate the diverse members of Greek politics and administrations who have put this plan together.

There are many hotels that could be converted all over Greece where needed.

Just the rehabilitation of the buildings alone will give a big push to the economy.

These dormitories will attract other small businesses to go to the area. This is a rejuvenation of all areas of the Greek economy. Bravo.

Demetra Tikellis

Kingston, NH, USA

Response to the letter of Theodore Vasilopoulos

Dear Theodore, with great interest I have read your letter.

I have written quite similar suggestions to several institutions and politicians within Europe in the past months and, as you can guess, there was no response.

What you should know is that also renewable energies are not free.

They need huge amounts of investments, and solar energy especially is still a very cost-intensive way of producing energy.

In any case, it is cheaper than transporting oil with ships to Crete and other island though.

The problem I see that stands between the idea of selling clean energy to other countries is called PPC [Greece?s Public Power Corporation].

PPC is by today the dirtiest energy producer within Europe.

Before selling clean energy to other countries it is necessary to renew or shut down the dirtiest power plants in Greece.

Greece has to fulfill targets in CO2 reduction like any other country in Europe.

Before these targets have been reached there is no sense of selling clean energy to Northern Europe while still producing and selling dirty energy in Greece.

Already, PPC is the bottleneck in the growing market of renewables.

Every wind power and solar plant (mostly private investments) makes the conventional power plants of PPC and their staff less necessary.

PPC and the Greek state have overslept the development that took place in many other European countries in the past 20 years.

Furthermore, they have established structures which makes it impossible for PPC to move in any direction that is not the direction of GENOP [the PPC workers? union].

My hope is that the European Task Force recognizes the big chance that renewable energy could be for Greece and helps to establish a sufficient Investment program.

The program should be big enough and scheduled for at least 15-20 years.

In that way, companies could be attracted not only to sell their products to Greece but also to establish parts of the production here to make the business as sustainable as possible.

Sebastian Schroeder

Patra

Loss of Greek sovereignty and ND

When both large ruling parties (ND and PASOK) systematically governed the Greek state into insolvency through not implementing measures that would had made it being more effective and efficient, and thus more productive and attractive to investors, it was the beginning of the end of (economic) sovereignty for Greece. It is very hypocritical of ND to be now be voting against loss of sovereignty when it was one of the architects that lea the current state being on to its knees and begging for money from the troika, in the first place.

Governments would like to believe that they are strong and are not answerable to anyone. Alas, the Greek situation has shown that when a State has been governed badly, ultimately your sovereignty means little if you can?t pay the bills.

Dimitri Tassiopoulos

Papachelas comments

Milton Friedman (Nobel economist) said many years ago when the euro «experiment» started that it would fail within 15 years because you cannot have monetary union without having fiscal union. He obviously was right. There will never be fiscal union in Europe between 17 countries. Wake up and smell the coffee! The United States has 50 states but one national government and one currency. One Federal Reserve System. If you want a «United States of Europe you need to abolish national governments. Good luck! ( Unless of course you allow the French to run everything ).

James Kotsonis

Alternative energy

While I praise Theodore Vasilopoulos who at 11 years of age is loving Greece and thinking about solutions to its economic problem, I cannot praise Peter Kates and David Lewin who claims to be engineer, which implies he knows what he is talking about.

I am a 70-year-old professional engineer-economist in the field of electrical energy production and have my own company in Canada. There is no question that if hydroelectric stations are possible, they present the best and cheapest option, if there are sites available. But with regards to solar and wind power, the principle of the concept seems simple and straight forward until one starts looking at the details. That is where the problems are hiding :

Just to pay the interest of its debit by producing and selling power, Greece will need either 3 million windmills with a capacity of 2MWe each, or 30 billion solar panels, 1 square meter each. The capital cost to build these power installations comes to about 12 trillion euros for either wind or solar power (ballpark). This is 40 times the total national debit of Greece. The interest on this 12-trillion-euro investment will never never be paid back because these plants have a lifetime of 20 years, after which time they would have to be replaced at an additional cost of 12 trillion euro.

I am not going into the detail that each windmills needs 1,500 workers for maintenance. Solar panels have to be washed weekly to keep producing power needing 1,000 workers at a time. I also am not going into the details that at night there is not sun and that 70% of the time there is no useful wind. What I want do to touch upon however is the energy needed to make all these windmills and solar panels and how long do these power producing facilities need to give it back before we have a net gain in power to sell.

The windmills need seven years to produce the power that went into making them and a solar panel needs 12 years of power production to return the energy used to make it. Now remember; both have to be replaced in about 20 years of operation.

These and a lot more other problems have caused countries like Germany and Denmark to subsidize heavily their renewable power. Before committing to these installations, learn the details from experience in wind power from Germany for the last 23 years, and in solar power from Spain. Ask them how much they have spent and how much power they have got out of them. I don’t believe that Greece at this time can afford to subsidize any form of energy.

Kosmas Voutsinos

Lethbridge, Canada

Re: Business owner arrested over unpaid taxes

That’s good. This is what the authorities should be doing. This is why many people don’t pay their taxes. If there’s no threat of punishment, why pay?

Phillip McElmuray

Re: Papandreou focuses on Greek goals

If the prime minister focuses on «lifting? some of the burden of the debt that Greek citizens currently feel burdened by, Greeks will be very surprised when they find out that none of the current burdens will disappear even if banks agree to a 60% haircut. Instead, the burdens will even get tougher. The burdens of Greeks will only start disappearing if there is growth in the economy, which provides new employment and new income. And wherever I look, I can’t anywhere find plans to generate growth in the economy.

Klaus Kastner

Austria

11-year-old boy

Theodore Vasilopoulos, I will not forget this day.

Let?s do it, European Union. Let?s face the fact that oil is not the way (not the only way)

Yes, let?s make this Union real and green and affordable for all citizens.

Thanks little boy, I am sure you give many people hope.

From a not so sunny Netherlands,

Gelsema Rafael