A new report by the European Commission concludes that Malta, together with, it must be said, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, is unlikely to meet its 2020 renewable energy targets. If one wished to be consoled by a race to the bottom, Hungary and Poland will certainly not be meeting their targets, according to the same report.
It would be wrong for Malta to fail to reach the targets set.
First, with the world climate change conference coming up in Paris shortly to remind us, there is a moral imperative for meeting these targets. As Pope Francis’ encyclical, ‘On the care of our common home’, has reminded us, unsustainable consumption of fossil fuels and climate change are at the root of the EU’s targets for greater renewable means of energy.
Indeed, the Commission’s report was also critical of Malta’s lack of preparedness for a comprehensive medium-to-long-term strategy for climate change and energy covering the period beyond 2020. Given Malta’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change and its reliance on fossil fuels for energy, this is particularly remiss.
Secondly, Malta’s performance on renewable energy to date has been abysmally slow. With only about 3.8 per cent of energy being produced from renewable sources up to 2013, it is stuck in the bottom group of the EU league table. The island has had several years in which to come up with answers. Other countries have made considerable progress in the same period.
The previous administration’s indecision over the future of wind farms as a possible renewable energy source, which hung fire for four years while investing thousands of euros in assessing their viability, has not helped. But this government changed course two years ago. It placed its focus on meeting its renewable energy targets on a mix of use of photovoltaics, solar, thermal and biofuels but, so far, achieving only limited progress.
Despite high-sounding plans to include the installation of large solar energy farms across the country – many to be placed in disused quarries – no such facilities, apart from a private initiative by Medserv in Kalafrana, have seen the light of day.
The fact is that the target to provide 10 per cent of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020 still stands and is inescapable. Brussels has warned Malta that it could face infringement proceedings if it continued to lag behind.
If the island does not make efforts to reach the targets, the Commission would not exclude the possibility of taking legal action against it.
The Commission’s report has also suggested that Malta should consider using “cooperation mechanisms” with other member states to facilitate the achievement of the targets. This would entail Malta having to consider buying cleaner energy from other member states to offset its energy obligations under the EU’s rules.
But such a move would carry substantial costs. The Auditor General has estimated that the notional 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. This would be further exacerbated by payment of penalties and expenses as a result of failure to meet targets in other areas (such as curbing emissions).
The European Commission’s scepticism about Malta’s ability to meet its renewable energy targets is worrying. It should act as an overdue spur to the government to prove it wrong.