Aid to major local businesses should be tied to strict zero carbon targets, the Green Party is proposing as part of its plan to drive Malta to reach its climate change targets.
The ADPD believes that large firms such as banks, insurers and financial services providers that receive some form of state aid should be given strict targets to achieve zero carbon emissions as part of their aid packages.
Its proposal comes days after Environment Minister Aaron Farrugia admitted that Malta would find it very challenging to meet its EU-set target of cutting emissions by 19 per cent by 2030 – a target that has already been slashed from the 36 per cent it originally stood at.
“It is evident that the government strategy will not lead Malta to become carbon neutral by 2050,” said party general secretary Ralph Cassar. Cassar said multiple governments had stalled progress in the sector for years and criticised a low carbon strategy unveiled this year as ineffective.
“It does not even consider sectors such as the maritime and aviation industries that leave a great impact,” he noted.
ADPD chairperson Carmel Cacopardo said that the government should lead by example, by requiring all new buildings to be carbon neutral, introducing protection for citizens’ solar rights and equipping industrial zones with wind turbines and PV panels to generate electricity.
Party deputy general secretary Melissa Bagley criticised the Labour and Nationalist parties of diversion tactics with their talk about interconnector power helping to slash Malta’s emissions.
Fossil fuel-generated power could be costly, she noted, and it was also not feasible for Malta to import all its power. Instead, Bagley argued that Maltese workers needed to be trained to be skilled in renewable energy fields and that the country should make better use of remote working to ease traffic and cut pollution – something the pandemic had shown was possible, but which was not being adequately followed up.
The ADPD press conference comes just one day before the United Nations holds a major climate change conference in Glasgow, known as COP26. The talks are meant to result in concrete actions that countries can take to keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030 – a level that scientists now agree is crucial if catastrophe is to be averted.