Tuesday, 7th July 2009 - 21:00CET
Clean energy more expensive but necessary - Austin Gatt
Any source of alternative energy would be cleaner but more expensive than fossil fuel, especially if the price of crude oil continued to hover around the current mark of US$70 per barrel, Infrastructure Minister Austin Gatt said.
He added that Malta must have clean energy, even if at a higher financial cost.
Answering a series of supplementary parliamentary questions by opposition MPs, he said that if the opposition continued to insist on wind farms at sea, the only place possible for one would be at Is-Sikka l-Bajda, and the project would still be very expensive. The only real possibility for affordable wind farms was on land.
Even so, land-based wind farms would have a minimal effect on the country’s financial outlay for energy, while sea wind farms would have no effect and would have to be subsidised if the energy they produced was to be on a par with the cost of fossil fuel energy. There was no technology available yet that would leave a favourable financial impact.
Dr Gatt said solar panels on the roof of a private household would have a bigger financial return for that household, and the government had long been subsidising this avenue. Even so, that household would not reap back its investment before nine years.
Experience abroad had shown that only large areas of solar panels could yet make commercial sense. Tunisia was working on a solar energy farm over a large area of its desert region, with the aim of selling energy to Italy. But there were no such large areas in Malta.
The minister said that another source of alternative energy still largely undiscussed was tapping of foreign energy through an interconnector with Sicily. This would give Malta a choice whether to get wind, solar or gas energy for its needs. While Malta generated 580 MW, Sicily had 1,500 MW from wind farms alone.
Dr Gatt said this was possibly the best alternative to share in alternative energy sources without the problems of cost and location of home-grown sources.
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Comments
The report you are citing is in regard to the effect of state funded renewable energy on "job creation" in Spain. It has nothing to do with the viability of the technologies in question. Austin Gatt keeps claiming that only land-based wind farming is viable. This may be true only in the short-term. Deep-sea wind farming technology is improving fast -- both economically and technically -- owing to the large demand. Malta has access to large areas of deep-sea potential which -- with assistance from EU countries, such as the UK which is making monies available to the poorer nations for the purpose of renewable energy -- it can exploit. Cables between Malta and Sicily would certainly help -- no big deal. But that doesn't mean Minister Gatt should stop there and do nothing else. It is inevitable that the cost of fossil fuel will increase again, and spiking suddenly, well before 2020. This while the pressure to reduce CO2 will keep increasing and becoming far more urgent than what it is now.
I do hope I have been non-controversial enough to make it past the censors this time.
i think that many points he made were VERY VALID.
let us connect to the European grid first. thats should be the priority.
we can then work slowly towards various alternatives in the long-term.
I also very much agree with Dr Gatt when he said that offshore wind farms are not worth it.
100% right.
finally,,,, ALTHOUGH I AGREE FULLY THAT WE SHOULD BE LOOKING SERIOUSLY AT SWITCHING TO ALTERNATIVE ENERGY FOR THE SAKE OF THE ENVIRONMENT,,, this has to be a long-term goal.
those who dream of doing it overnight do not know what they are talking about. FOR MANY REASONS but primarily because malta cannot afford such investments in the short term.
In the case of PV the payback time is anywhere between 13 years with subsidy to nearer 20 years without subsidy - basically hardly any saving (monetary as compared to environmentally) at all.
This explains why earlier this year I read about a local union complaining that the interconnector is no solution to get alternative energy.
Poor little Malta, always ready to give itself in the hands of its neighbours.
Mario Nichia
Viareggio
I personally emailed him, the prime minister and others (not least the shadow minister in the remote hope that reality will start to sink in) a report by the King-Juan-Carlos University of Madrid analysing the disastrous economic consequences that publicly subsidised 'renewables' led to in Spain. A country which has long been cited as the 'model' to follow:
the report can be found here and i seriously implore your readers to go through it, if only to see what is in store for them if these insane policies are pursued:
http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf
This report is notunique, there are several others but is one of the most important as it analytically destroys the myth of the "Green Bubble"
if you thought that the current blackout was an anomaly, just wait till we depend on windmills for which you will have to pay through your teeth.
All this bla bla bla about clean energy , only to get the other item on ADT's failure to test vehicle emissions!!
"and the government had long been subsidising this avenue" !!!!!!!
Really Dr. Gatt !!!!!
The cheek of a statement like this one is:
1. Beyond belief
2. Treating Joe Public as an imbecile
"Tunisia was working on a solar energy farm over a large area of its desert region, with the aim of selling energy to Italy"
Even Tunisia is therefore far ahead of Malta in this field!!!!
We are not saying exporting to Italy but for our own consumption ....
I feel sorry for the 10% of Maltese that do not deserve this sort of mismanagement ...