Thirty months since winning the election, the government has at last produced a renewable energy road map. It certainly cannot be accused of acting hastily.
Malta has been set a target by the European Union to meet 10 per cent of its energy needs from clean renewable energy by 2020. With five years to go, it will be getting five per cent by the end of this year, an increase from the 3.8 per cent of two years ago.
The government has secured EU funds amounting to €60 million to invest in renewable energy resources. The funds will be partly used to encourage the private sector and NGOs to come up with projects that make use of renewable energy resources.
Whereas under the Nationalist government the emphasis had been on the establishment of a giant wind turbine farm at Sikka l-Bajda (a project that was torpedoed by the planning authority), wind energy does not feature in this government’s road map. Instead, it has focused on a greater reliance on solar energy, with photovoltaic (PV) systems taking centre stage. It is planned that half Malta’s 10 per cent target will be generated by PV systems. This is not surprising given the agreement signed with China, where its investment in Enemalta includes the option of setting up a company that assembles Chinese solar panels in Malta for sale in Europe.
While not impossible, the calculation that Malta would need about 2.7 kilometres of solar farms to meet the required target underlines the nature of the challenge ahead. Recognising the inevitable land-use difficulties, the road map highlights that the aim will be to use “highly disturbed land”, such as quarries, while giving incentives to the private sector to use any large areas available to them, such a factory roofs.
Other renewable energy sources will include waste to energy, solar water heaters and roof tanks, heat pumps and biomass. Their contribution to Malta’s target is minimal, with each generating about one per cent or less by 2020.
It is planned that the use of biofuels will gradually increase to around 2.5 per cent as the EU imposes clean transport fuel as a necessary part of the energy consumption mix.
In concentrating on the targets set by the EU – and Malta’s abysmal failure thus far to get anywhere near meeting them – it is easy to overlook that the reason the EU set them was twofold: to contribute towards reducing the threat of climate change and to reduce air pollution.
Malta’s more immediate problems of the adverse effects of fossil fuel pollution on the nation’s health and the urgent need to introduce alternative sources of energy to alleviate them are crucial. Transport in Malta is the major contributor to its high levels of air pollution. The cost of inaction is being felt through the serious damage to health.
The climate change pressure for renewable energy comes from the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thus avoiding the high financial cost of inaction that will accrue from having to pay for carbon emission trading.
Quite apart from the need to meet the EU’s targets by 2020, therefore, everybody should be adopting an array of measures and lifestyle changes aimed at reducing fossil fuel energy use, minimising greenhouse gases and combating the poisonous pollution in our urban environment.
Apart from the government’s road map, emphasis should also be placed on simple, inexpensive and immediately feasible energy-efficient measures, many of which have been long accepted as routine in other advanced countries.