The editorial ‘Scepticism on renewable energy’ (November 28) correctly refers to the previous administration’s indecision over the future of wind farms. This was indeed the case. It is also ironical that the Opposition also joined in with an anti-wind energy chorus. It is a long and sad story which deserves to be retold.
On February 19, 2004, the business section of the Times of Malta had announced that a ‘Lm10m [€23.3 million] wind farm project awaits approval’. This was very welcome news to those who had Malta’s future energy development at heart. It seemed as though Malta was at last poised on the cusp of an era of renewable energy.
The project was to be a 12 turbine farm based on tested technology, which was economically feasible in comparison to other renewable energy technologies. The wind farm was to be sited at Marfa Ridge, an uninhabited stretch of land exposed to our prevailing majjistral (north west). The wind farm was to be built by a consortium that offered to sell the energy to the grid at the current going price.
In no time at all outlandish objections to the wind farm started to pour in from people with flawed knowledge derived from phoney internet sources. Mepa swallowed all the corny unsubstantiated objections raised in letters to the Times of Malta and came out with the ridiculous conclusion that a wind farm “would have a negative impact on the environment”. This conclusion was supported by both political parties.
Petty politics may also have played a part. Evarist Bartolo and George Vella declared themselves “personally” against wind energy.
The final blow was the report ‘A draft renewable energy policy for Malta’ of August 2006. It dismissed out of hand the possibility of land-based wind energy.
The report in question cited “enormous visual and other impacts which will dominate the Maltese landscape” (a subjective criterion). This visual obsession was taken up by most politicians, including the Prime Minister.
Around that time, the results of nearly 30 tourism impact and public perception surveys on wind farms were available. These showed consistently that a small percentage of local populations, around 20 per cent, tended to express initial opposition to wind energy but that, once people experience the operation of a wind farm for themselves, such opposition dwindled to less than five per cent following installation of the wind farms.
Instead of turbines, we have ubiquitous cranes symbolising destructive runaway development
Malta’s energy situation in 2004 could not have been worse. Electricity generation was totally dependent on oil and was expected to reach an EU energy target of 20 per cent of energy generation from renewable sources by 2020. This quota was reduced to 10 per cent by 2020. This reprieve gave Mepa (and the government) a chance to revert to myopia and Malta continued, regardless, to generate electricity from inferior fuel in inefficient power stations that supplied electricity through a system with distribution losses, further reducing efficiency.
By contrast, wind power generation worldwide had quadrupled over the six preceding years and already contributed three per cent of total electricity generation in Europe - equivalent to the consumption of 32.7 million households.
The leading countries in terms of wind energy exploitation were Denmark, which had already nearly reached the quota of 20 per cent, followed by Spain (nine per cent) and Germany (seven per cent).
Renewable energy was also providing full-time employment for 150,000 people.
Having rejected land-based wind energy on unfounded objections, Mepa hatched an ambitious, hugely expensive offshore wind energy project as a grand solution to keep politicians and locals happy that something “was being done”. It was a non-starter and, predictably, also failed.
Our electricity consumption continued to increase in the intervening years. Highly-polluting and energy dense commercial development continued unabated with addition of thousands of energy- and thermal-inefficient apartment blocks, high-rise tower blocks and large-scale developments like Smart City. All this in spite of transposition into our law of EU Directive 2002/91/EC on the energy performance of buildings.
Massive development continued, mostly ignoring transposed Legal Notice 238 of 2006. These new developments will remain responsible for a heavy drain on energy for decades.
Instead of turbines, a symbol of a clean future and technological progress, we have ubiquitous cranes symbolising destructive runaway development.
Eleven cranes can be seen from the window where this article is being written but no politician - or the planning authority - worries about this ‘visual impact’ as long as the money rolls in and never mind the pollution.
We are heading for the proverbial progress trap, seduced as we are by making the quick buck on a colossal scale - at the expense of everything else, including our future health.
The 2004 proposal was made at a time when turbines were still relatively cheap and available with no waiting list.
This wind farm would by now have been into its 10th year of electricity generation. It would have provided information on the advisability of further expanding wind energy in Malta and yielded a realistic estimate of the potential of wind energy in Malta.
We would have benefited in other ways. This project, with an estimated annual output of 55GWh (equivalent to approximately five per cent of Malta’s electricity needs at the time), would also have provided a valuable opportunity for our technicians to gain hands-on experience in the servicing and maintenance of wind energy generators and to test the logistics of adding a major source of intermittent electricity to our grid.
It would also have provided new employment opportunities. It could have spawned a mini-industry with great potential of producing turbine parts for supply to surrounding countries.
The universally-accepted importance of replacing fossil fuels with renewables and dramatically increasing energy efficiency applies as much to Malta as much as anywhere else. It is also accepted that energy diversity is the best way of maintaining energy reliability.
But Malta thinks, wrongly, that we can depend solely on photovoltaic panel farms. And so we remain at square one.