At the end of his piece ‘Renewable Energy in Malta’ (December 3) George Debono wrote: “It would be interesting to know the basis for the decision to exclude land-based and near offshore wind turbines in (shallow) coastal waters, if there was any.”
And then he asked: “Was the decision based on technical facts or on continuing bias or commercial agendas?”
The question can be taken to refer to the proposal published in 2009 by Lawrence Gonzi’s government: two small onshore wind farms, at Ħal-Far and Baħrija, and one large offshore farm at Sikka l-Bajda (SB) off Rdum tal-Madonna, Armier.
Between 2009 and election time in 2013 a wind speed measuring mast was set up in Armier. George Pullicino used the occasion to utter a solemn warning that there was no (wind power) Plan B if SB failed to take off. We would have to ask the EU to revise our renewable energy target for 2020.
In 2012 Mepa completed a detailed EIA on SB, which effectively ruled out the SB site, mainly through a perceived serious threat to the Yelkouan shearwater colony nesting in the Armier cliffs. This conclusion was passed on to the government in July 2014.
Responsibility for the ‘death’ of wind power can fairly be shared by our two last governments
In fact the original report on which the 2009 proposal was based mentioned another offshore site: a strip of sea stretching from Il-Qolla l-Bajda (Marsalforn) to San Blas, with the 30m depth contour extending out to 300m-800m from the shoreline, and with no SB-type bird problems prima facie. However, Pullicino and his advisors refused to look at the site, for reasons never divulged. But sometime in 2012 former Gozo minister Giovanna Debono set up a wind speed measuring mast at il-Ħotba, near Ras S. Dimitri: no reasons given nor any results ever published. The mast has now been dismantled. So much for offshore.
Ħal-Far died a death by inaction. While the 2009 proposal lay gathering dust, an airport approach radar was installed on the site. That cannot tolerate tall structures like wind turbines in its vicinity as its beam propagates at quite low angles to the horizontal.
All of these objections were taken on board by the writers of the 2016 National Renewable Energy Plan (NREP) to write off wind power.
So two down and one to go. The first blow against Wied Rini (Baħrija) was dealt by the then leader of the Opposition Joseph Muscat, a blow of a type we have since come to know only too well: an off-the-cuff remark with zero content of sense or information. “A wind farm at Wied Rini would disrupt the water supply,” he said.
True enough, the proposal did seem to have ‘self-destruct’ features. There were 10 turbines planned, all on pristine sites, demanding a considerable ‘consumption’ of untouched garrigue. Now this was an odd choice.
There were a number (two or three) areas covered by illegally dumped construction waste; an illegal ‘go-kart’ track at the southern end of the garrigue; and at least 15 sites housing the now-disused trellis masts of Malta Radio, set on a concrete base of sufficient area to take sub-megawatt turbines.
There is no record that anyone paid any attention to Muscat’s or anybody else’s gripes about Wied Rini. The place just slipped below the wind farm horizon. Only now a few words have appeared in the NREP about turbine noise, bird problems(?), difficult access roads. Words with no credible information content.
So the responsibility for the ‘death’ of wind power can fairly be shared by our two last governments. That has not discouraged Opposition sympathisers from attacking the government for giving up on wind power; but all the hot air generated by these ‘undertakers’ would not have turned a toy turbine.
Edward Mallia is honorary chairman of Friends of the Earth (Malta).