The writing of A. Cilia-Vincenti (The Sunday Times, March 9) has an engaging Rip Van Winkle quality. The author surfaces suddenly, conducts a rapid tour d'horizon and then goes on to ask questions and to make suggestions that may have been relevant at the time he went to sleep.
The Institute of Energy Technology (IET) has been an integral part of the University of Malta for 20 years; but for almost half that time it had hardly any staff and certainly very few resources. That situation is now different. IET "achievements" can be seen by a visit to its Website, where work, publications by IET staff and associates, and events, seminars etc. organised are listed. As for IET "cost to date in terms of overheads and consultancies", Prof. Cilia Vincenti might be better advised to ask the Finance Office of the University rather than make libellous, uninformed remarks implying misuse of public money.
That "huge expenditure" at Arka Respite Centre has been corrected by Anne Zammit (The Sunday Times, March 23). Arka has not spent one cent on PV panels; but the energy audit by the IET put up a figure for the electricity savings and capital costs, were the available surface to be covered with PV panels. In any case, Prof. Cilia Vincenti's remarks are superficial. Apart from the soaring cost of energy, which makes installation of PV panels a good long-term investment, the financial penalties for going over allotted CO2 emission quotas should be considered.
The Government is providing some (not very generous) capital incentives for PV purchases and more may be in the offing. And Enemalta has been working a de facto barter agreement on PV-generated electricity in households for over two years, in fact about as long as the so-called surcharge has been in place. So barter is old hat and not at all attractive. What would provide a strong push forward here would be a unit price at least two or three times that charged by Enemalta.
We have had minimum regulations relating to insulation of walls, roofs, etc., for many years. Levels of compliance are another matter, of course. More to the point, the EU Directive on the thermal performance of buildings was transposed into local legislation on January 1, 2007. No one seems to be in any hurry to implement the provisions.
Prof. Cilia Vincenti must have been in a very deep sleep to venture the advice that "wind farms on ridges around Mellieha... should be favourably considered". Such locations for wind farms have been banned. Offshore shallow water sites have also been ruled out, either by denial of the existence of such sites or by loud, empty claims by the Malta Tourism Authority that they are already dedicated to tourism activity.
On the other hand, Prof. Cilia Vincenti is right to dismiss concerns about cable connection reliability, even if the German and Italian blackouts show that failures do occur. A connection to the European grid would be a much neater solution for us than having nuclear reactors on our territory. With the cable connection we will be able to buy nuclear (or greener) electricity from the European grid, assuming that the trans-Alpine and southern Italian grids are strengthened.
Prof. Cilia Vincenti's plug for local nuclear reactors glosses over too many problems to be worth much. With our limited space, there are problems of safety and of disposal of radioactive waste, which may or may not be mitigated by future reactor design. All in all, it would be better if we keep nuclear reactors at arm's length.