Getting real on alternatives

After addressing the Labour Party's recent AGM I was misreported by Net TV as having attacked the Nationalist Party for not having been successful in implementing alternative energy projects while rubbishing the Sikka l-Bajda wind farm project. This is a perversion of the truth. The very same media truth the Prime Minister clamoured for during a Tumas Fenech Foundation keynote speech he delivered last Friday.

What I did do is question how one can talk of alternative energy projects when the country does not even have an alternative energy strategy.

Right now we have three fault lines.

An electricity generation plan (2006-2015) from which we have been deviating already, a national energy plan that is nowhere to be seen and an alternative energy plan that by the time of writing has remained in draft form since 2006.

Although I have already received various preliminary technical assessments on the pros and cons of Sikka l-Bajda as a wind farm site, I will opt for prudence for the time being until more concrete studies are carried out. But I cannot refrain from quoting what the draft renewable energy plan has to say about it.

On page 3, under the heading Medium Near-Shore Wind Farms At Sea (Depth Of Seabed <50m), the draft report states that, although the site might be considered attractive, no decision to go ahead with this project has yet been taken... current analysis indicates that disadvantages of this mode of RES exploitation may outweigh its advantages.

I have been asking the government all along to publish all its studies related to wind energy and any other potential alternative energy options. While the Minister for Resources had replied that he will have no problem publishing them at the opportune moment, when answering my supplementary questions in the House on his return from the EU Brussels summit, where the energy and climate package had been agreed upon, the Prime Minister cautioned about such requests, claiming that it might be insensitive to go public with such material at this delicate juncture because of certain commercial interests that might be at play.

While the budget itself makes it almost clear that we shall be opting for Sikka l-Bajda and a link-up to the EU energy grid in the very near future, we now have it that various tests still need to be carried out regarding the former while studies need to be carried out regarding the latter.

It is worth mentioning that experts claim that the Sikka l-Bajda process can take some four years to come on stream while the wind farm project cannot operate unless we are first linked to the EU energy grid in the eventuality (hypothetical or not) that we will end up producing more energy than our own national grid can carry at any given time.

In my humble opinion, the Sikka l-Bajda project is being hyped so much by the government for two reasons: to send a signal to Brussels that, although far belatedly, things have started moving on the alternative energy front; to make us forget how irrational it was of the Prime Minister to have originally claimed that the best bet for Malta in terms of wind energy would have been to go for a large-scale offshore wind farm - within Maltese territorial waters with depths of more than 50m. This project seems to have been virtually put on hold and the government is nowadays merely referring to it as a pilot project. The reason why this proposal - which Dr Gonzi had even boasted of in front of French President Nicolas Sarkozy - has been put on the slow burner is that it is untried, untested and uncosted.

Further to all that we have to bear in mind that although both the wind farm project and the link-up to the EU energy grid have been presented to us as a given, as the editorial on Saturday diligently pointed out, when the island is planning two major energy projects the cost of which is estimated at €200 million, an EU allocation of €20 million out of €5 billion is paltry and falls far short of expectations. Not only that, but the allocation also has to be shared with Cyprus.

As for the electricity generation plan also published in 2006 we were told that unless emissions from the steam plant at Marsa power station are reduced to below the established level by January1, 2008, the plant will only be allowed to operate for 20,000 hours from this date and is expected to be shut down by April 2010 at the present rate of operation.

We have now come to learn that its lifespan has been extended to 2015.

Last week, Parliament was told that the government will publish its wind energy plans shortly.

I personally feel that one should insist that the government must first publish its national energy plan and alternative energy strategy before even attempting to move one centimetre forward. That is, if we really believe in a holistic rather than a piecemeal approach!

Mr Brincat is a Labour member of Parliament.

brincat.leo@gmail.com