Alternative energy from above and below

I decided to take up the challenge put out by Keith Galea, communications officer at the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs, on the subject of the report drawn up by the Climate Change Committee and give my comments about it.

The report is quite exhaustive, but it lacks one aspect as regards sustainable clean energy which is being tried by scores of nations. This is geothermal energy whereby steam to power turbines is obtained from water thrown down a well of some three kilometres' depth. It hits very hot rocks and comes up as steam and is then guided on to turn turbines. This is actually being done in Landau in Germany, where they managed to produce 22 gigawatt hours per year, which is over 40 times what we produce. It does not produce any CO2 .

The cost of such an installation is somewhere in the region of €60 million. This is a fraction of the cost of the installation of a system to capture and store CO2 emissions, as the report envisages. This project would make our energy costs rise sky-high because we would not only have to pay for the fuel and conversion but also for its cleaning.

Now let's be fair: 50 per cent of the greenhouse gases globally are produced by ruminants like cows, sheep, goats and deer. So why do we have to carry the burden of those countries which breed millions of these animals? One could resolve such a problem of cleaning by not producing it, and not only going for geothermal energy but - instead of spending billions to capture and store CO2 - laying a seabed cable to the continent and importing clean power from those countries which produce it using atomic energy. It comes cheaper. Another way of cleaning our air is to facilitate the use of gas as a fuel for our cars, to which the report gives due mention. We should start on this project immediately, taking all the safety precautions necessary considering the inherent dangers.

The authorities have gone a long way to encourage the use of solar water heaters. I have been using this facility for the last two years. I have never made use of the electric heater except for some 30 days per year and only utilising one kilowatt hour at a time. Hot water is always available thanks to our sun.

On photovoltaic panels, the help given by the state is quite generous. However when the one Kw hour passed to the grid is squared off by one taken from the grid, the reward is not only meagre but downright immoral. In Germany an extra Kw generated by the citizens is paid back three times over what the users pay for kws from the grid. Even in Italy kilowatts passed on to the grid are handsomely paid. This might encourage more citizens to install photovoltaic panels and will also lessen our fuel importation bill. It will also encourage people to install a photovoltaic system in their summer houses. The wind is unreliable in summer but sunny days in summer are unending.