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Some background to James Debono’s excellent piece entitled “Studies debunk Gatt claims of costly clean energy” (27 November, 2005) might be in order.
The most charitable interpretation one can extend to the assertions of Minister Gatt about renewable energy’s (RE) “illusions” would be that he meant to point out that we cannot substitute all or even the major part of present fossil-fuel electricity generation from renewable sources. But as the “ministry has no original competence in the matter” it must be taking advice… incompetent advice of course. The source of that advice might be the same one that for decades resisted the publication of the unit cost of electricity generation, while claiming that the cost to users was subsidised. Now that the surcharge has replaced subsidy, we are getting a new figure every month.
If minister Gatt were to venture out of his bunker he would see for himself that wind generated electricity is not “a product that exists only in theory”. Hard-nosed German, Danish and Spanish investors each have more installed wind capacity than we have at Marsa and Delimara combined; and, equally, have people quite capable of working out realistic unit costs for any projected wind farm. Quoting the Shell CEO on RE prices is like quoting the devil on the difficulties of chastity: both have a deep vested interest in the other side of the coin.
Minister Gatt may also like to take this matter up with his fellow minister Ninu Zammit, who has paid out some Lm100,000 of public money to UK consultants to carry out this “simplistic exercise” of determining unit costs of various RE technologies including wind. The figures provided by Ing. Riolo, the Malta Resource Authority’s CEO are from this study, which found on-shore wind to be cheaper than offshore. This conclusion agreed with work done by University of Malta staff members on the RE potential of the Maltese Islands.
Incidentally, this work had been accepted for presentation at the Rome conference mentioned by James Debono. However, it was unethically removed from the conference programme at a late stage by the organiser, in favour of the Mott Mac Donald presentation. Quite by chance, Mott Macdonald were one of the sponsors of the conference. Moreover, the basis for their work was mainly data obtained and worked up by University of Malta staff.
Edward Mallia
Attard
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