A $1 billion Amazon-backed wind farm is tearing through Northern Greece’s untouched Vermio mountains, part of a wider industry assault that could affect nearly a third of the country’s remaining wilderness
In Northern Greece lie the Vermio mountains. Herodotus once said this mountain range was impassible and according to tradition, paradise was to be held on the other side. Now, there’s a different story. A recent investigative piece from Reporters United shares how tech giant Amazon has breached Greece’s uncharted mountains. Only a few months ago, to climb the 2,062-meter Hamitis, the highest peak of Vermio in Western Macedonia, one had to hike for several hours through dense forests and pastures. Now, it looks more like a construction site.
“The magic of the summit, of the untrodden, has been lost. Now, companies have the right to just tear up our mountain,” says Giorgos Kasapidis, a member of SOS Vermio.
The culprit is a 59-turbine wind farm owned by the Cyprus-based Aer Soleir, a subsidiary of the Irish company Aer Solei, which is in turn owned by the American Quantum Capital Group. In November 2024, Amazon backed the project with a $1 billion investment to purchase the energy produced by the farm for fifteen years. The complex cuts directly through what Greek researchers call Roadless Areas (ΠΑΔ) – zones where the core lies at least one kilometre from the nearest road. These areas cover just 6% of Greece’s land surface and represent the country’s closest equivalent to true wilderness. Scientists say they should not be subject to any form of intervention.
Reporters United’s investigation, part of the pan-European Green to Grey project coordinated by Arena for Journalism and involving eleven media outlets, used satellite imagery to reveal how wind farms have destroyed 1,487 stremmata (roughly 150 hectares) of roadless land over the past three years, opening 60 kilometres of new roads into previously untouched terrain. Vermio has suffered most: 13 of the 59 turbines are sited within its two roadless zones.
Amazon is not alone. The investigation traces construction activity by some of the world’s largest energy corporations – including EDF, Iberdrola, EDP, DEI (Greece’s public power company), and Mitsubishi-backed European Energy – across unprotected wilderness sites stretching from Boeotia to the Peloponnese. If all planned projects go ahead, the article reports that the share of roadless mountain territory affected could rise from 3% to nearly 28% – roughly one in three of Greece’s untouched peaks.
Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis had promised at COP26 in 2021 that wind turbines would not be placed in the country’s roadless mountains and formally protected ten such areas. But hundreds of other roadless zones remain legally unprotected, leaving them vulnerable. The Deputy Minister of Energy told Reporters United that a spatial plan for renewables is still being drafted and declined to commit to including all roadless areas in exclusion zones. Amazon did not respond to the outlet’s questions.
Biology professor Vasiliki Kati, who led the mapping project at the University of Ioannina, warns that new roads into wilderness are among the gravest threats to biodiversity worldwide. Once a roadless area is fragmented, even neighbouring untouched land may lose its wilderness designation in future surveys – quietly erasing what took millennia to form.
The original article by Daphne Karavola, Eurydice Bersi and Ioanna Petsiou, ‘Η Amazon πατά τ’ απάτητα βουνά της Ελλάδας’ was published in Greek on 1 October, 2025 on Reporters United.
It is available here.
Reporters United is a non-profit investigative journalism network based in Athens, Greece, dedicated to producing independent, in-depth reporting and cross-border collaborations.
