The alternative (energy) Budget

The piece headed "Alternative Energy" in the European Movement report (The Sunday Times, November 6) seemed poorly informed. The Prime Minister is not "an environmentalist", but he has already declared that (i) No public land will be made available for on-shore wind farms (pre-Budget document); (ii) Wind farms are not viable (Budget); and (iii) Offshore wind farms have attracted objections from every tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor and his dog (pre-Budget doc).

The only opinion not yet known is that of the Association of Spider Crabs living on the 50-metre depth contour. The Malta Resources Authority (MRA) has been ordered to consult them (pre-Budget document), just in case they have no objection to hosting a wind farm. Of course, to date wind farmers have not shown any interest in "planting" rotors 50 metres down.

No doubt "science has moved on from the filthy emissions of the older generation incinerators", but that does not offer much consolation. The "older generation of incinerators" were never admitted to be "filthy" in their time. Yet we are all carrying some of that "filth" in our bodies, and science has failed to protect us from its effects.

However, the writer can rest assured that bio-digesters can produce enough methane to yield useful amounts of energy, provided we organise the raw material supply properly. Was s/he not aware of the Prime Minister going into raptures when sniffing the first methane from Iz-Zwejra engineered landfill?

Regrettably we cannot imitate these Welsh "Duke of York" habits, marching water up the hill and marching it down again. We have no storage capacity other than for two to three days' supply of drinking water.

On energy performance of buildings, the EU has just issued a new set of regulations. There will be no quick return for us; we cannot overcome a 50-year mental, physical and money block in a short time, even if Minister Ninu Zammit, to his credit, has already issued a document on the matter.

A news story, entitled "Environmentalists welcome Budget" seems to have come from a press release from Nature Trust Malta. Aside from what appears to be a U-turn (last summer NTM believed solar and wind energy were non-starters in this maritime republic) NTM seems rather confused.

No changes have been made to the national grid to accommodate anybody; the incentives are available to both new and existing households, and as anyone with a grid-connected PV system can put electrical energy on the grid, s/he is already supplying "customers", at just 2c a unit too!

The approval of "new incentives for wind energy" is a little futile. It concerns small rotors put up in built-up areas, likely to arouse at least as much opposition as wind farms; maybe not from NTM but from neighbours, planners, homing pigeon owners and other urban denizens.

Incidentally, a look at the Website of the European Wind Energy Association (www.ewea.org) before shooting from the hip about wind farms, would do all of us a lot of good.

Perhaps the least palatable part was the statement that "a national awareness campaign on alternative energy is the way forward". There is too much (uninformed) "awareness" on alternative energy and far too little information on conventional energy. To put it another way, the Budget document was taken as a rousing call for people to go out and buy an alternative energy kit, thereby avoiding nasty surcharges and saving the nation from bankrupting itself buying expensive fuel.

In its most balanced part the Budget text acknowledges: "In truth, few have sought to apply alternative energy, despite the incentives introduced in this regard." Aside from an inflated view of these "incentives", that statement points to the correct order of things. It is far quicker and far cheaper to save electricity by changing wasteful practices than it is to replace these (wasted) units by alternative energy devices, with or without incentives.

To take a concrete example: changing a permanently switched-on but intermittently-used electric "geyser" consuming six units/day to operation by a Lm5 time-switch could half consumption.

At January 2006 unit prices, that would yield a saving of Lm5 (the time switch price) in 25 days. Rush out and buy a solar water heater instead; with incentive, that would still need some Lm400. Even if you were to save all of the six units/day you would still need 1,000 days to recover your capital. Going for a PV system or a small wind turbine would be much worse.

This is not an argument against alternative energy devices (which I use myself), but for a use of RE devices to eat into that irreducible core of fossil fuel generated units, so optimising the money and environmental return. That is what I take to be the central message of the (energy) Budget.