It might sound trivial writing about the failure of the Government’s energy policy in a week that was dominated by far more spectacular events – the touch-go talk of an invasion of and/or ceasefire in Gaza; the fresh attempts to address the fiscal cliff; the emergence of China’s new leadership team and the new meaning that the Petraeus saga gave to the tag “covert affairs”.
The national renewable energy action plan needs a serious overhaul- Leo Brincat
But, in fact, it is not. With the island potentially on the eve of an election we are still without an official national energy policy that has languished in draft form since 2009.
Even worse, the recent talk of solar farms by the Prime Minister exposed the uncertainty and the chaotic attitude to the Government’s overall approach to renewables. Not that the idea itself is bad but that it merely exposed further chinks in the armour.
In the 2008 electoral manifesto there was not even a passing reference to such farms or parks. In the draft renewable energy policy for Malta (page 10), the Government had declared that large land-based solar farms were not considered attractive due to their footprint per unit output and also due to their impact on the landscape. Admittedly, expressed at a time when PV systems must have still cost some three times what they actually do today, the document had even said it might be far more cost effective to go for solar water heaters!
Back to the draft national energy policy plan (2009 one moment it claimed that the most cost effective feasible technology for generating electricity locally is through large onshore wind farms, the next offshore wind energy was rated as being more costly to install and maintain but offered key advantages over onshore wind farms. The recent EIA almost sounded the death knell of the whole project.
Blaming the Opposition for Government failures is no excuse.
On the other hand, while the Prime Minister had, days ago, merely declared that the Government was just studying a proposal on solar farms, in the draft energy policy, among the proposed measures, the Government had not only committed itself to consider providing a share in PV solar park investment, in assigned public areas, to investors who have no access to their own solar potential but it had gone one step further. It had declared officially that the proposal was then being studied for possible implementation in 2010.
As in the case of wind energy, the Government has hardly anything to show at all. While we had always supported the idea of government use of its own buildings and rooftops for solar purposes (the Labour Party, in 2007, had actually singled out the Mater Dei Hospital rooftops among other properties as just one example), the recent expression of interest has somehow not been completely wrapped up yet. No one knows whether the regulator, the Malta Resources Authority, has actually agreed or not to the preferential feed in tariff on the basis of which the relevant adjudication of this mega tender seems to have been made.
Meanwhile, a recent statement in other sections of the media confirms that there are no solar farm government projects or proposals under consideration either at MEPA or the MRA’s end, for the simple reason that no proposals have been submitted at all.
I am the first to admit that the national renewable energy action plan to which we committed ourselves with the European Commission cannot be modified in any way. We have long known that there are legal tools in the RES Directive that allow one to tweak the plan – albeit through consultations with the Commission – however, this is not the best of ways in which to move ahead and formulate our policies.
Is there a RES Department within government? How many people are involved in such policy planning and how true is it that work is carried out mainly in an ad hoc manner?
Rather than indulging in a ping pong reaction to the Government’s weak and predictable response to my statement on solar farms, there are some important points to make.
Despite all the efforts in terms of solar energy potential (which we obviously support) it is still a fact that the Government is far from reaching this year’s target of 2.6 per cent share of renewable energy in overall final energy consumption.
The Government is being challenged to provide accurate (not estimated) data of energy being produced from all the solar energy initiatives undertaken by it so far, in terms of mega watts, and how much this translates into a percentage share of renewable energy of final energy consumed. If estimates only exist, then it is more shameful that we don’t even know exactly what we have achieved so far in terms of RES in percentage terms.
It remains a fact that a lot of time has been wasted on wind studies. Such studies are important but a serious policymaker should have had a plan B in case studies are negative.
It is common knowledge that if we do not reach this year’s 2.6 per cent target, the Commission is likely to question what went wrong and possibly request changes in our RES planning.
The bottom line is the following: the national renewable energy action plan needs a serious overhaul as a result of poor planning – the price paid being time wasted and a deceived public with the prospect of new fines lurking on the horizon.
It may be convenient to try and counter our energy stance, more so when the Government’s own strategy reminds me more of a ball of confusion while we continue to lag far behind both EU and world average performances on renewables.
Brincat.leo@gmail.com
www.leobrincat.com
Leo Brincat is a Labour Member of Parliament.