According to reports, SLR Consulting is to provide environmental services for the development of two wind farms in Malta.

SLR is to provide technical environmental assessments for the two wind farm sites: an onshore site at Wied Rini and an offshore site at Is-Sikka l-Bajda, a rocky bank 1.5 km north-east of Malta.

The 10.2 MW Wied Rini wind farm will consist of 12 wind turbines and Sikka l-Bajda would produce up to 95 MW.

SLR Principal Bob Edmonds was quoted as saying: “SLR has had an agreement with AIS Environmental Ltd to provide environmental consultancy services across the Mediterranean from AIS’ base in Malta for the past 13 years.

“It is fantastic that we have won the bid to provide environmental services for these proposed wind farms, which not only demonstrates SLR’s capabilities in the renewable energy sector but also helps the Maltese Government’s renewable energy targets.”

Plans for the proposed wind farm at Sikka l-Bajda off the coast, in particular, are an integral component of Malta’s renewable energy action plan, which aims to see 10 per cent of its energy being derived from renewable sources by 2020.

Plans are now moving further ahead with the appointment of SLR, following the awarding of a tender for consultancy services for an Environmental Impact Assessment and other technical studies for an outline development application to AIS.

The tender, worth €295,000, was awarded to AIS Environmental, which has carried out several contracts for the government, including the recent EIA for the Delimara Power Station extension, the Hal Far wind farm and the MCAST master plan.

The EIA is a sensitive one, with much hinging on its results, as well as a wide range of concerns on the proposed farm’s impact on the delicate marine environment at the site.

BirdLife Malta has also questioned whether the proposed project would fall foul of the EU’s birds directive, and has expressed concern over the effect of the project’s planned 18 to 20 turbines, with an estimated potential of 95MW, on the protected Yelkouan Shearwater breeding colony on the nearby cliffs.

Other environmental concerns will also play a role in the suitability of wind farms for Malta, as the Malta Resources Authority pointed out earlier this year. Until EIAs have been carried out at the proposed wind farm sites, the MRA said in its draft renewable energy action plan earlier this year, the impact on the marine environment cannot be known in detail.

The MRA had foreseen no such problem with the Hal Far onshore wind farm option, since it is located within an industrial zone, but stressed that environmental concerns over the onshore wind farm at Wied Rini in Bahrija and the offshore site at Sikka l-Bajda “need to be assessed”.

In terms of the offshore site at Sikka l-Bajda, the condition of the seabed is another “risky issue”, according to the MRA, and surveys still had to be carried out to determine the seabed’s characteristics in order to determine the type of foundation that would have to be built for the turbines, as well as to plan the route of the export cable leading to shore.

Studies recently carried out on the seabed had uncovered the existence of two large underwater sinkholes on the proposed wind farm’s site and the EIA would establish whether there were more such sinkholes in the area while also identifying the most strategic places for the turbines.

The terms of reference for the EIA, published in July 2009, call for the addressing of several issues, among which are the potential effect on the marine ecology and environment, the effects on birds and bats, noise levels, characteristics of the sea and landscape and visual amenity, the area’s geology, geomorphology and palaeontology, impact on the sea and land and the impact on human populations.

In addition to environmental sensitivities, which could turn out to be a deal breaker, the MRA identified that the planning stage for large scale wind energy projects “involves a number of risks which could lead to the failure of such a project… some risks may not materialise but others could lead to abandoning the project”.

Such risk of failure could relate to the natural potential of such an installation in terms of cost and revenue. As such, there are also a number of uncertainties in the initial stages and the MRA stresses the importance of estimating the annual energy yield from a prospective wind farm.

Additionally, certain large renewable energy projects may need to be delayed until such time as the country’s grid infrastructure is able to handle them. As matters currently stand, the grid would not be able to accommodate the 109.4MW that would be supplied in total by the planned two onshore and one offshore wind farms without jeopardising the continuity of supply.

A study has been commissioned to investigate such concerns, but there are concerns that the implementation of large-scale projects may need to be delayed due to required grid infrastructure upgrading or because the operational capacities of such projects may need to be diminished during “specific conditions”.

The study has also been extended to determine the effects of the wind farms’ capacity on the grid, once the Malta-Sicily energy grid interconnection is in place.