Congratulations to The Independent on Sunday for an excellent and realistic assessment of Malta’s renewable energy situation (“A renewable strategy”, Editorial, 30 May).

Over the past years, renewable energy in Malta has been dogged not only by a misguided pessimistic government attitude, but also by a refusal to listen to advice. There was, until recently, an incomprehensible lack of political will to act realistically on renewable energy. Instead, much effort was expended on a plethora of reports that seemed mostly aimed at identifying illusory obstacles to renewable energy rather than finding solutions.

All along there was an obstinate refusal to listen to individuals who had either given the matter serious thought or who were actually experts in the field. The opinions of NGOs were disregarded and comments made in response to public consultation documents went unheeded. For instance, it is difficult to grasp what creative diligence the MRA must have expended to come up with the extraordinarily precise “best scenario” figure of “9.2 per cent” energy from renewables by 2020 while MEEREA points that Malta can exceed the target. Even the praiseworthy initiative of subsidising domestic rooftop solar energy has been afflicted by such hesitation, hiccups, limitations and hideous bureaucratic complications that many have been deterred from installing solar panels.

The saga of wind energy in Malta is nothing short of tragic. In 2004, a commercial consortium proposed a 12-turbine wind farm on Marfa Ridge. The projected annual output of this wind farm was 55 GWh or, in simpler terms, equivalent to approximately five per cent of Malta’s electricity consumption at the time – or the energy needs of about 7,000 households. Marfa Ridge was ideal by virtue of its proximity to the Malta-Gozo electric grid, its exposed nature and the absence of dwellings in the vicinity. This wind farm would have avoided, among other pollutants, the annual emission into our atmosphere of over 16,500 tonnes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, 45 tonnes of nitrogen dioxide and 55 tonnes of sulphur dioxide. The energy was to be sold to Malta at the going rate for electricity. The proposal seemed ideal – literally a free gift to Malta. Mepa dithered for months and eventually turned it down. In retrospect this misguided decision can only be regarded as disastrous.

In the ensuing period, Enemalta/MRA continued justifying its decision by stressing concerns about the “visual aspect” of a land-based wind farm and the MTA

continued objecting to it because of its “effect on tourism”. These negative attitudes were based on nothing more than uninformed gut feelings and not on sound evidence. There have, in fact, been numerous surveys on the public perception of wind farms and their effect on tourism, practically all of which showed that tourism is not affected by the presence of wind farms and that public perception is usually won over if adequate information is disseminated in advance.

The plan is now to run before we can walk. Apart from the small projects at Hal Far and Bahrija, which may or may not materialise, our only meaningful project is a large offshore wind farm on Sikka l-Bajda. Unlike land-based projects, offshore wind farms are logistically hugely difficult and expensive projects that take much longer to achieve. The intention is laudable but, having missed a golden opportunity to get on the renewable energy bandwagon years ago with a sizeable wind farm, Malta will now continue lagging behind for another decade or so.

It is sad to think that, had the Marfa project not been turned down, it might have kick-started a renewable energy movement in Malta and we might, by now, have been less dependent on oil. This wind farm, by now in its fifth year of electricity generation, would have given us a realistic estimate of the potential of wind energy in Malta and whether such a land-based wind farm was aesthetically acceptable to the Maltese. In these five years, Malta would have benefited in many other ways. Beside providing a significant amount of clean electricity and reducing Malta’s carbon annual carbon dioxide emissions by a total of over 80,000 tonnes, such a project would also have provided a valuable opportunity for our technicians to gain some hands-on experience in the servicing and maintenance of wind energy generators and tested the logistics of adding a major source of intermittent electricity to our grid. It would also have provided new employment opportunities and, as your editorial rightly says, it may have provided a springboard from which Malta (possibly having retained the dockyard) could have become a manufacturing centre for renewable energy products and a centre for technical support and services in southern Mediterranean countries.

Because of so many misguided decisions and missed opportunities, Malta is still at the bottom of the EU renewable energy league.

G. G Debono

SLIEMA