Greece has proposed building a cable that will carry electricity produced by renewables to Austria and southern Germany, its Energy Minister said on Thursday.

With abundant sun and wind, Athens has simplified permitting and supports hefty investment in power networks expansion to more than double the share of renewables to 70% of electricity consumption by 2030.

"We have already submitted a proposal to Austria, to my Austrian counterpart and my German counterpart to build a power interconnection to link Greece with Austria and further with southern Germany," Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas told a renewable energy conference in Athens.

Skrekas said that the cable, which would run through Albania and other Balkan countries, would have an initial capacity of 3 gigawatt that could be ramped up to 9 gigawatt.

An energy ministry source said that the discussions with Austria and Germany are underway on the conditions for the implementation and the funding of such a project.

The European Union executive wants to speed up the bloc's green transition and cut its reliance on Russian fuels by allowing some renewable energy projects to receive permits within a year.

European governments trying to meet goals for carbon emissions reductions have had their efforts complicated by a spike in energy prices and fuel supply crunch as a result of Russia cutting gas flows to Europe after invading Ukraine.

Meantime, Greece is building a niche place as a supplier of renewable energy.

Along with Cyprus, the country inaugurated last week the construction of the EuroAsia Interconnector, an EU-funded subsea cable that will cross the Mediterranean carrying up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity to eventually link grids from Israel and Cyprus to Greece.

And last year, Greece signed an agreement with Egypt that sets the stage for an undersea cable that will transmit renewable power to Europe, the first such infrastructure in the Mediterranean. (Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)