During his budget speech Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi is reported to have stated as follows: "Studies carried out to date indicate that large wind farms or solar energy farms were not viable on our island," (The Times Budget Supplement, November 1). This simply cannot be true. It is either a misprint or a mistranslation. If Dr Gonzi did indeed say this then one can only conclude that he has been seriously misinformed by his advisers on the question of exploiting alternative sources of energy.

Available data suggest that, though conditions are not perfect, we still have enough wind to make wind farms a realistic proposition. Proof of this was an application from an independent commercial company to build a wind farm on Marfa Ridge and sell pollution-free electricity to the government. The proposal unfortunately met with unjustified opposition on the grounds that the farm would be unsightly and that the garigue at Marfa would be damaged. Neither of these objections is valid.

The objection on aesthetic grounds is a purely subjective matter. With spiralling oil prices it is now becoming a matter of expediency rather than aesthetics. Public attitude surveys generally show that local support increases following construction of wind farms, once people experience the operation of a wind farm for themselves.

There were other objections: that turbines are noisy or that they kill birds. These objections were based on faulty or exaggerated data. The main objection was that the garigue will be damaged. This is totally incorrect.

Foundations for the turbines on a wind farm only disturb a very small part of the surface area of the wind farm. Typically the amount of land disturbed amounts to no more than three to five per cent of the surface area of the wind farm. It is likely that even less area would be required for the foundations of each individual turbine at Marfa since these would be bedded in solid rock. Contrary to what opponents of the wind farm asserted, the land on which the wind farm stands retains its original use whether for recreation or farming; or it remains in its natural state. There will be no perimeter fencing.

What must also be emphasised is this: A wind farm is not a permanent structure. The useful working life of a turbine is approximately 20 years. By that time other, more sustainable forms of renewable energy exploitation may have become available.

In this event the turbines can be removed leaving virtually no trace and a corresponding saving in increasingly expensive oil will have been made - not to mention the environmental gain consequent upon the avoidance of the generation of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Construction work and maintenance activities (which are minimal) and road access will not cause disturbance since the planned turbines will be placed as near to existing roads and tracks as possible.

The turbines themselves are constructed from modules and the assembly of the turbines is a clean process.

Since land is at a premium in Malta, the ideal solution would, of course, be to construct offshore wind farms but this is virtually impossible since the sea which surrounds us is too deep. This alternative is therefore prohibitively expensive. The same almost certainly applies to siting a wind farm on reclaimed land - it would be impossible to reclaim a sufficiently large area of land for such a purpose.

Now, months later, the predicted rise in oil prices has begun to bite and Malta is still in the absurd position of being totally dependent on oil for her energy. When all the portends are that the upward price spiral of fossil fuels will continue, it is becoming sheer madness to continue ignoring opportunities to exploit renewable energy.

Yet we bypassed this proposal for a wind farm for trivial or invalid reasons. This wind farm might have constituted Malta's first step towards exploiting a sustainable, cost effective, environmentally friendly, affordable and clean source of renewable energy.

The use of wind power in other countries proved the sceptics wrong. Unfortunately, as long as unjustified bias and misinformation prevail, we will remain at square one in terms of renewable energy, thus remaining subject to the inevitable rise in the cost of fossil fuel.