The European Commission has warned Malta it could face infringement proceedings if it continues to lag behind in meeting its 2020 renewable energy targets. The Commission highlighted that Malta is the EU country farthest from meeting its targets. It warned that if it did not make efforts to reach the targets it would not exclude the possibility of taking legal action.

The Auditor General has estimated that the national costs of failing to meet the renewable energy targets as a result of having, in the short term, to buy ‘green credits’ from countries with excess capacity and, in the longer term, entering into new cooperation agreements with other countries to supply our needs, would amount to about €400 million, a not insignificant cost.

This would be further exacerbated by payment of other penalties and expenses as a result of failure to meet targets in other areas (such as curbing emissions). These could be very expensive missed targets.

While most of the EU countries have the target of achieving 20 per cent of their energy production from renewable sources, Malta struck a deal with the Commission six years ago allowing it to settle for a 10 per cent renewable energy target instead.

Disgracefully, Malta has already failed to meet its 2011 and 2012 renewable energy targets. It is producing only two per cent of its energy from renewable sources and is not on track to meet any of its future benchmarks either.

Unless the country invests heavily in alternative energy production sources, it will miss the 2020 target by a whopping 28 per cent, the largest deficit of all the countries unlikely to meet their targets.

While Sweden and Estonia have already met their targets six years ahead of schedule, Malta remains the laggard. Why? The former Resources Minister George Pullicino, must take a share of the blame, but the current Administration cannot simply now hide behind that. It has been responsible for renewable energy policy for 15 months, time enough surely to have made some impact in this field.

This government’s Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi has devoted considerable energy to putting arrangements in place to ensure implementation of its election-winning promise to reduce household utility costs and, moreover, to tackle the appalling administrative and financial state of Enemalta. But there seems to have been scant regard paid to stimulating action on the renewable energy front.

While it is acknowledged that this is a highly complex matter, it is also an inescapable fact that Malta has had several years in which to come up with answers; that other nations have made considerable progress in the same period; and that the technology is now largely tried and tested. Although the government has been examining various projects, nothing substantial has come of them. Plans for three wind farms have been abandoned. The increased use of bio-fuels or photovoltaic and solar energies has not been pursued with sufficient drive or financial incentive.

It is indicative of the lackadaisical Malta has adopted to its plans for renewable energy that the previous government had submitted a national renewable energy plan to Brussels in 2010, forecasting that it would exceed the 10 per cent benchmark set.

But the government appears to have made little tangible progress since in identifying sources of alternative energy which could come anywhere near meeting this target.

It is time the Energy Minister turned his attention to this problem. The government’s failure to act is a cause for concern. Action is now necessary and urgent.

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