Greece is ready to approve the country’s first climate law this week to help meet targets of reducing harmful emissions by 55% by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050, according to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Speaking to Bloomberg Television at the United Nation’s COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow, Mitsotakis said it’s important that citizens are not turned against policies to protect the climate because they are “forced to pay the cost of the transition.”

“We can’t afford this,” Mitsotakis said. “We need people to support us”.

Mitsotakis’s conservative government has pledged to close all lignite coal-fired power plants by 2028 at the latest, and could even bring forward the target to the end of 2025.

His administration is aiming to produce 2 gigawatts of power from offshore wind by 2029 or 2030, and will introduce legislation on renewables to help Greece become one of the main generators of offshore wind power in the Mediterranean.

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Mitsotakis also addressed the issue of surging energy prices stoking gains in consumer prices.

“Inflation is a real concern,” he told Bloomberg TV. “I would hope it’s a short-term asymmetry between global supply and global demand,” he said, adding that it will become clear if it’s a temporary phenomenon in the first quarter of next year.

“Overall I’m very bullish about the potential of the Greek economy,” he said.

Source: Bloomberg