Dark Satanic mills

In a great effort to ward off those "dark satanic mills" from our shores, Mr Alfred Zammit (The Sunday Times, July 23) has drawn all the wrong conclusions from what he calls the facts about wind turbines (WT).

It is a fact that electricity generation is not the only source of greenhouse gases (GHG). So if Denmark's GHG emissions increased by 7.3% between 2002 and 2003, there are at least two questions to ask before rushing to imply the total uselessness of WT. The first is the obvious one of how much of that GHG increase came from electricity generation; the second is how large would the generation GHG increase have been if the WT had not been there.

The sneer that the Danes have not closed down conventional power stations despite their many WT is pure drivel, given that no country has set out on WT development with the aim of 'closing down' conventional power stations.

In the UK, the wind appears to be a very different entity from its Danish relative; WT are actually expected to make inroads into GHG emissions. But the gullible British public has not realised that the sun has set on the Empire and that their CO2 emissions are no longer on a planetary scale. So why bother about them? Has Mr Zammit ever heard of Kyoto or of this country's entry into the EU? Incidentally, the German public may have more reason to be "impressed" than their UK counterpart: WT operation avoided emission of 23 million tonnes of CO2 in 2004 alone, while providing some 4.5% of total generation.

In a lightning survey of costs and subsidies for electricity, the Danes again come out as suckers, tolerating high electricity prices to support WT subsidies: a connection Mr Zammit launches without any shred of evidence to support it. But Spain, Germany and Switzerland are much cannier: they are reducing subsidies. Indeed they are, and for the obvious reason. Onshore WT generation costs are now at par or below that of conventional technology. With January 2005 fuel prices, an upper limit of unit cost for gas and wind is 6 euro cents/kWh while for oil it is 7-8 euro cents/kWh.

As a side issue not mentioned by Mr Zammit, Spain, Germany and Denmark have numbers of WT firms currently in full production. There is no hint that they are about to shut down. On the other hand, Denmark did have a serious setback when all 60 WT on the offshore Horns Rev had to be re-landed to correct a design fault.

Dead birds and noise

Birds are also a concern of Mr Zammit's. The European Wind Energy Association Omnibus has a section on birds. Mr Zammit's bête noire, Altomont Pass, in California, is mentioned: 99 dead birds in four years from a forest of turbines. La Tarif, Spain has no figures; Navarre (2003), Spain: 88 dead birds from 692 turbines; Finland (2001): in one year 10 birds killed by 60 WT and another 820,000 bird deaths from all other causes.

The US Fish and WildLife service figures of 40 birds per turbine per year for European WT are not mentioned, but there is reference to RSPB and BirdLife International objections to some wind farm locations. This quote from the Centre for Evidence-Based Conservation sums up the flavour of these objections: "We are not saying stop building wind farms. Birds will suffer much more from climate change if we don't. But the data show we have to be much more careful when we site them."

On noise and other forms of disturbance, Mr Zammit follows the usual tack - a few disjointed quotes and on to rapid conclusions. A low frequency hum will only be heard by someone standing under the rotor; and the blade noise can be determined from the noise footprint supplied by the maker.

A modern 1 MW rotor (larger than we should accommodate here, but more of that later) at 200 m produces 49 dBA; compared to the 60 dBA of a vacuum cleaner at 30 m. So use of quotes like: "Wind turbines generate noise that can be disturbing to nearby residents" are obvious and worthless; while others like "lit-up rotors destroy the dark skies that many people in rural areas cherish" are laughable.

Mr Zammit would have been better advised to stick to local considerations. While we do have considerable potential, no one in his right senses would argue that there is an open-and-shut case for onshore farms here. But it should not be forgotten we have also some potential for shallow water offshore wind farms, having useful areas with depths of less than 10-20 m.

Now the Malta Resources Authority (MRA), which has ruled out on shore farms on fairly flimsy grounds, did send a questionnaire to "government agencies" asking for their reaction to offshore WT at various locations. The major problem with the questionnaire, apart from ignoring a north Gozo site, was that it was "promoting" 2 MW rotors, which is overlarge for our scale of country. So if one considers Benghajsa Reef, outside the Freeport, the MIA said the (2 MW) rotors would impinge on the airport flight path. Now an 850 kW rotor would be lower than the Freeport cranes at full stretch; but the questionnaire did not provide that option.

The Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) objected to all the sites. Sikka il-Bajda, off Armier Point, was dismissed by the MRA's UK consultants as "a marginal site in comparison to other international offshore sites". After that quite bogus assessment, one would have thought there was no need to include this site in the questionnaire. But it was, and MTA insisted that the site was a vital one for tourism, while having no quarrel with use of it for bunkering.

But just to show the world that we are really at the cutting edge in everything, we said we are exploring the possibility of going to seabed depths greater than 50 m and then to even deeper places as per the Prime Minister's Vienna declaration.

Mr Zammit's general conclusions are worthless; he fails to make his quotes work for his country, otherwise he would have contacted the authors of "that German study referred to earlier" so that they can supply us with those filters which will remove (to where and into what?) those power station GHGs. The usual platitudes for GHG abatement - much chattered about but never put into action - improved public transport, hybrid electric cars, etc., almost bring the tirade to an end; but Mr Zammit slips on a final banana skin.

The EU did not impose any 5% of electricity generation by RE by 2010. That figure was first plucked out of the air during a trip abroad by Minister Ninu Zammit, to the consternation of his staff who have now admitted that it is just not possible.