China yesterday announced that power rationing will come into effect in Shanghai when the mercury hits 37 degrees Celsius.

This is not new. Some 23,000 businesses in the financial centre have been subject to mandatory rationing. But for the first time this year, some 3,000 non-production and manufacturing businesses, such as shopping malls and offices will also be affected, as Shanghai continues with its policy of putting households first. The truth is that all over the world, energy generation is just not keeping up with demand.

A few years back, Malta was completely out of power as the infamous Boiler 7 blew at the Marsa plant and tripped the rest of the grid. It was, what is called, a brownout. Large parts of the country were out of power in sweltering summer heat. Produce in freezers went bad, offices had to stop work and anyone without a generator was left hoping against hope that the power would come back on, if only to allow for a cool drink and to switch on a fan.

Malta is particular. We are a tiny island, cut off from mainland Europe and at present are completely reliant on locally generated electricity which comes from burning low sulphur oil.

There are many risks in this strategy. Notwithstanding the current ‘cheap’ price of oil due to economic fears in Portugal, Greece, Spain, Ireland and now also Italy, there is a very real danger that output will not meet demand.

Nigeria has its fair share of problems as militants continue to put the Niger Delta oil plants under pressure. Libya is only exporting a fraction of what it is capable of producing and Iraq has never managed to get production levels back up to what they were before the US and UK invasion.

In addition, we are also hamstrung by capacity output. It is clear that when demand soars during heat waves, the local grid simply cannot cope with the extra burden of more air conditioning units being cranked up to full power, while people carry on with their daily consumption.

It is clear that the undersea cable linking Malta to mainland Europe is not only useful, but essential, both in terms of basic standard of living, as well as for economic growth. The plan is there and is understood to be in motion, but this link is vital and now, it is needed more than ever. Being linked to the European grid will allow for security of provision.

But we must go beyond that. Malta is lagging behind in renewable energy. Granted, we have seen solar water heaters become more common, as well as the use of photo voltaic energy generation cells, but when we look at Europe and the rest of the world, we are decades (if not lifetimes) behind the mainstream pack.

We still await the wind farm technology that will feed power into the grid and we are also still waiting to hear of the viability of turning landfill gas into usable methane to power local turbines. This is 2011 and things are going to get much, much worse on this crowded planet (and islands) of ours. Humanity is heading for a crisis of resources. It is getting drier and hotter and the planet cannot sustain this level of greed for much longer. We must have a redundancy plan and we must generate more power from re-usables. Failure to do so will turn this country into a barren wasteland which people will begin to flee in the not so distant future. We might well turn ourselves into water and power refugees. What an ironic end that would be.