Your report Wind farms a “difficult” solution – minister (TMID, 22 June) deserves comment.

If Malta’s aim is to generate 20 per cent of energy requirements by 2020, as required by the EU, the approach to our energy problems has to be based on as broad a front as possible. It should include all available modalities of energy production from renewable sources. That these should be combined with energy-saving measures goes without saying.

The immediately available options for large-scale renewable energy generation in Malta are land-based wind (and possibly near offshore) turbines and sun (photovoltaic) energy as well as biogas production from municipal wastes and manure. The potential of energy generation from wave energy and/or sea currents should also be investigated.

Malta, with her abundant sunshine, has a huge potential for (photovoltaic) electricity production. Although photovoltaic technology has the drawback of being expensive and of only producing energy during daylight hours, it can make a highly significant contribution to our energy needs and go a long way to reducing our dependency on fossil fuels.

The system of subsidies on domestic rooftop photovoltaic installations and solar water heating is a very positive government initiative which deserves more investment; maybe the incentives could be made more attractive and a massive education and awareness campaign put into operation to encourage more take-up. It should also be made mandatory for new large buildings to incorporate photovoltaic units – this should include obligatory photovoltaic window or wall panels in high-rise blocks.

Going out on a broad front means exploiting all renewable energy possibilities. At this point in time, this should include the currently most favourable and sustainable option of land-based wind energy. But our government still seems stubbornly biased against land-based wind energy and is aiming for offshore deep-sea wind energy.

Though going offshore in shallower water might also be a sustainable solution, the necessary investment in offshore wind energy is correspondingly higher. Deep-sea offshore wind turbines a long distance out to sea – the most favoured approach of our government – poses enormous logistic problems and the technology is still in development and therefore untested.

The investment required for deep-sea turbines is also extremely high and this option might not be sustainable. In the face of all this, it is very bizarre that our Resources and Infrastructure Minister, Ninu Zammit, persists in his stand that the easiest option of land-based wind farms poses a problem due to the density of population in Malta. This is not so at all. Built-up areas are densely concentrated in about one quarter of the island to the northeast.

The rest of Malta is sparsely populated and has many large virtually uninhabited areas. Many of these areas are elevated, exposed and windswept. A sizeable wind farm of, say, 10 or 12 turbines only needs an area about half the surface of Comino. The terrain is not disturbed and (wild-) life goes on unhindered beneath the turbine. Such turbines can be completely removed, barely leaving a trace, at the end of their useful life. The nature of wind turbines is such that they are built well away from inhabited areas. The minimum permissible distance from inhabited areas is 800m in the EU. At this minimum distance they certainly are visible but do not intrude.

Unfortunately the oil lobby did their best to smear the reputation of wind energy in the 1980s by propagating myths and misinformation about wind energy which, unfortunately, are still being repeated today. Nationalist MP Michael Asciak repeated some old chestnuts in Parliament. Thus, while conceding that land-based wind turbines are extremely cost effective (which is correct), he went on to say that wind energy has “drawbacks” such as the need for “vast expanses” of land, causes “noise pollution”, and “skyline aesthetic distortion”.

First of all, wind farms do not require “vast expanses” of land. As explained above, wind farms capable of generating a substantial part of our energy requirements would need less than a square mile and only two to five per cent of the land surface is disturbed and no perimeter fence is needed.

It is ironical to hear a politician worrying about “skyline aesthetic distortion” when Malta seems to be given over to a spree of high-rise buildings with apparent governmental approval. Note that this building orgy results in semi-permanent urban “skyline aesthetic distortion” from giant cranes which are right in front of our noses and obstructing traffic. This widespread massive development does not seem to worry our Tourism Authority (MTA) in the least – as it should. On the other hand, MTA issued a senseless blanket condemnation of wind energy on land or on one of our shallower reefs on the basis of “a negative impact on tourism”.

This is nonsense. To most people (and this includes tourists), wind farms represent a sign of progress and modernity.

To talk about “noise pollution” from a wind farm, as Dr Asciak did, is indicative of lack of knowledge on these matters. Noise is no longer an issue in wind power owing to greatly-improved blade design and emergence of the gearless generating system. With modern turbines, the noise at 300 metres away is barely audible. The added irony is that Malta – the land of fireworks, petards and ubiquitous mega-amplified music – is probably the most noise-polluted country on this planet.

When considering wind energy, let us by all means talk and speculate about far-offshore deep-sea turbines as a future long-term solution. This option, though it might sound ideal, is still a long way off. The technology of deep-sea turbines is new and poses formidable logistic problems. It is still untested and will be prone to teething problems. On the other hand, land-based (and offshore, in shallow seas up to 20m) wind turbine technology is now a fully developed and well established way to generate electricity in a highly sustainable way.

It is insane to continue dismissing this possibility on illusory grounds. There is no escaping the fact that, for the present, land-based wind power is virtually the only choice open to Malta in her first step towards generating electricity from renewable energy. And we are doing nothing about it.

G.G. Debono M.D.

Sliema