A brief look back at the Sikka l-Bajda story might serve to put matters into perspective. At the end of April 2009, then prime minister Lawrence Gonzi and environment minister George Pullicino announced a proposal to set up three wind farms: offshore on Sikka l-Bajda; onshore at Wied Rini (Baħrija) and at Ħal Far.

Pullicino had been quoted as saying that Sikka l-Bajda would cost about €300 million, expected to come from private sources. In November 2009, a wind-speed/direction measuring mast was set up at Armier point. On that occasion, Pullicino said that were Sikka l-Bajda not to materialise, there was no Plan B for reaching our renewable energy 2020 quota.

After a year of data collection, it was announced that Mepa permission was being sought for two more years of measurement so as to get a more accurate picture of Sikka l-Bajda conditions and to enable the experts to make reliable predictions of wind behaviour for the 20-year lifetime of the turbines. The commercial and scientific sense of that plan was open to doubt.

But by the end of December 2012, when the two extra ‘measuring’ years were up and Petra Caruana Dingli had been director for the environment for at least 18 months, there was no fresh ‘news’ on any aspect of the wind farm proposal.

No private offers had materialised. The problems posed by the Yelkouan Shearwater could have crystallised into insuperable objections but Pullicino and Mepa remained silent. Was this silence a ‘political decision’? Whatever it was, some 60 days later, there was a changing of the political guard, leading to another period of silence.

The silence has been broken only recently. Under the influence of a partially completed EIA, Mepa chairman Vince Cassar persuaded the board (bar one member) to axe Sikka l-Bajda. Ħal Far and Wied Rini were not mentioned. The former has certainly been elbowed out by the two airport approach radar towers at Ħal Far, but no serious objections have emerged in public regarding Wied Rini.

So is this axe a political one? In so far as Sikka l-Bajda is concerned it need not have been. The Yelkouan Shearwater constituted a sufficiently fatal objection, only surmountable if the Sikka l-Bajda farm had been declared a project of national importance.

The contention that Sikka l-Bajda output would be surplus to requirements at night has not been properly established and is in any case afflicted by an unimaginative view of possible ‘requirements’ and by forgetting the two-way capability of the Sicily interconnector. The refusal – spanning March 2013 – to consider other offshore sites must be political as no technical objections have been put forward.

Wied Rini has been buried in an unmarked grave by a cross-party firm of undertakers. We have been left with tantrums, rhetorical questions, the usual finger pointing and hastily cobbled schemes to cover the renewal energy deficit by setting up solar PV farms, this last said to be related to Chinese plans to manufacture PV panels locally for the European market. Of course, we are still in line for a ‘Best in Europe’ nomination.

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