While Greek authorities are taking steps to harness the country's untapped potential in wind and solar energy, and to meet European Union targets on curbing the use of polluting fossil fuels, the residents of Aegean islands are opposing the drive, afraid that towering wind turbines will mar the natural beauty of their communities and offend the tourists on whom they rely.

While Greek authorities are taking steps to harness the country's untapped potential in wind and solar energy, and to meet European Union targets on curbing the use of polluting fossil fuels, the residents of Aegean islands are opposing the drive, afraid that towering wind turbines will mar the natural beauty of their communities and offend the tourists on whom they rely.

After years of foot-dragging, the government has drafted legislation to exploit Greece's abundant renewable energy sources.

"We are breaking down the barriers of the past with a comprehensive framework for the development of private investments" in renewable energy, the development minister, Christos Folias, said in an e-mail message.

This is good news for hundreds of would-be investors whose applications have stalled in bureaucracy, but residents of the islands that are candidates for development by entrepreneurs are up in arms.

On Serifos - a postcard-pretty member of the Cyclades group of islands, which includes Mykonos - protests by locals have derailed a project for the installation of a wind farm with 87 turbines, each 150 meters, or 500 feet, tall.

"There's no way we're going to let this happen - it would destroy the island," said Antonis Antonakis, head of the local council. "I don't understand why they're targeting areas of natural beauty - there are swaths of barren mainland and dozens of uninhabited islands."

The environmental council for the Cyclades, a regional authority, said that turbines should be placed in the sea. "They won't bother anyone there," said the council's spokesman, Panayiotis Vouros.

On Skyros, in the western Aegean, authorities have rebuffed plans by a local monastery and a construction company to create a "forest" of 111 wind turbines in the southern part of the island, which is home to a nature reserve protected by the European Union. If constructed, it would become the largest wind park in Europe, generating 330 megawatts of electricity, equivalent to half of Greece's current installed wind energy capacity.

Most Greek wind energy is produced on the islands of Evia and Crete. But these islands are 10 to 100 times the size of each of the Cyclades and are not dominated by their wind parks.

Authorities on Serifos and Skyros, where proposed wind parks would cover about a third of the islands' surface area, said they might consider smaller-scale projects but would not agree to become renewable energy "factories" for Greece to meet EU demands that it should produce 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

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