I wouldn't like Anne Zammit (The Sunday Times, March 23) to remain under the impression that I was criticising her personally when she wrote about Malta's future electricity supply. We need more environmentally conscious people like her rather than the selfish grabbers we seem to have too many of.

She reveals that the source of her scepticism about reliability and security of electricity supply via cable connection to the European grid is an Enemalta document, which claims that recent experience shows that each country puts its national interests above that of overseas contractual obligations in times of local energy shortages.

The only breakdown of the European grid in recent years, that I am aware of, was a few hours' blackout apparently due to a sudden fall in wind energy generation in Germany. One hopes that those responsible for the integrity of the European grid are now aware of the insecurity of wind energy and also of gas supplies from potentially politically unfriendly and unstable countries, and have given enough attention to the French model of energy self-sufficiency by producing 80 per cent of their electricity from carbon emissions-free nuclear energy.

Perhaps we Maltese often forget that our islands are only the size of a small European town; towns on the mainland do not have their own electricity generation - they get it from a centralised grid. We are no longer a British fortress surrounded by potential enemies, and therefore needing our own electricity generation facilities - we are now offshore islands of the EU. The Isle of Wight is cable-connected to southern England and is about to commission an onshore electricity from waste project to cut down its carbon foot print. This is a model we should look at.

Cable connection to the European grid, supplemented by an electricity-from-waste facility, and wind energy (why not consider wind farms on Mellieha ridges and land reclamation on the reef next to the coast road at Maghtab, rather than tens of kilometres offshore?), would probably suit us best.

Enemalta's recommendation that cable connection would need to be backed up by, say, a gas-fired power station, sounds to me like arguing that you need to buy two new cars to be sure you have reliable transport. The advantage of cable connection is that it eliminates the need for a full-blown new gas-fired power station - having both would seem an exorbitant luxury, and (after the Mater Dei Hospital experience) we should be more careful about throwing taxpayers' money at big projects.