Our country is bound by an EU directive to ensure that 10 per cent of the energy we are consuming by 2020 comes from renewable energy sources. We are thus considering all the options available to us to help us reach this target.
Much is being done to encourage the use of solar energy, a sector where we still lag far behind when compared to other Mediterranean countries. Steps are being taken to generate energy in the waste management process. But most of our attention is at present focused on the potentials of wind energy.
The Renewable Energy Policy for Malta (2006) proposed the building of a large offshore wind farm and the possibility of constructing a large farm with up to 19 turbines on the Sikka l-Bajda reef is being studied.
A relatively new development is the proposal being put forward for a wind farm with 12 turbines in Wied Rini, limits of Rabat. This proposal was first mentioned one month after the last general election.
Several studies carried out by different physicians around the world have recorded a common set of ill health effects among people living near wind turbines. The symptoms appear when the turbines begin to turn and are relieved when the victims leave the area. The symptoms include severe headaches, sleep disturbance, nausea, visual blurring, anxiety and depression. They are collectively referred to as "wind turbine syndrome". The primary cause is the effect of low frequency wind turbine noise on the organs of the inner ear. Older people are more likely to be affected due to age-related physiological changes.
When turning with the sun behind them, turbine blades cast moving shadows across the landscape and houses, described as a strobe effect (flicker) within houses, which can be difficult to block out. Some people lose their balance or become nauseated from seeing the movement. People with a personal or family history of migraine, or migraine-associated phenomena such as car sickness or vertigo, are more susceptible to these effects.
The strobe effect can provoke seizures in people with epilepsy.
Based on the data gathered from different studies, notably those by Amanda Harry and Nina Pierpont, it is strongly recommended that those living within 0.8 kilometres of wind turbines should be apprised that they are likely to experience very bothersome levels of noise or flicker.
It is also recommended that wind farms should not be built within 2.5 kilometres of people's homes.
There will still be health and life quality problems caused by wind turbines beyond this radius. People living up to 4.5 kilometres from a proposed turbine site should be notified of potential health and life quality effects and it is recommended that, for this, they should be appropriately compensated.
It is noteworthy that villages like Baħrija lie about 700 metres away from the site proposed for the Wied Rini turbines. Both Rabat and Mtarfa, with a greater population density, lie well within a four-kilometre radius. If the proposal for this onshore wind farm were to be accepted, the potential legal implications for the government are too serious to even contemplate. Rabat local council has already taken a stand against the Wied Rini proposal.
Bearing in mind that a submarine cable will soon be connecting us with mainland Europe's electricity grid, it makes much more sense lobbying Europe to allow us to buy our renewable energy quota from another European country.
Our diminutive size makes many of the other options available to us unfeasible.
Dr Pullicino Orlando is a Nationalist member of Parliament.