Government’s ambitious plan to harness wind energy has a contract value of €1 billion

Government’s ambitious plan to produce around 300MW of energy from floating wind turbines has an estimated contract value of €1 billion, public documents show.

The government last week issued a call for interested parties to participate in a competitive process for the “design, construction, operation, maintenance and decommissioning” of a floating wind farm situated 12 nautical miles away from shore.

The concession will be for 35 years and the two sites identified by the government for a potential wind farm are next to Hurd’s Bank, off Marsaskala, and to the south, off the Freeport.

The two areas are situated outside territorial waters but within Malta’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Bidders will be expected to identify where they plan to site their project within the identified areas.

This means that plans announced a few years ago for a floating offshore wind farm off Marsalforn in Gozo have been pushed to the side.

A spokesperson for Interconnect Malta (ICM), the government agency responsible for this project told MaltaToday that the two chosen sites were selected following an evaluation that took into consideration the distance from the Delimara power station, where the cables will be connected; the areas that are likely to suffer least environmental impact and the strength of the wind.

Tender documents available on the government’s tendering portal show that the sites are located on the Maltese continental shelf in areas reaching depths of about 100-150m.

The government is targeting a project with a wind generation plant with an installed capacity of between 280MW and 320MW. The potential developer is to build and operate the project in a portion of one of the areas specified for this use and energy generated by the turbines will be transmitted back to shore via export cables.

The competitive process will involve three stages: Stage 1 is the Preliminary Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ), Stage 2 is the Invitation to Participate in Dialogue (ITPD) and Stage 3 is the Best and Final Offer (BAFO).

The estimated contract value is €1,007,000,000 and bidders have until 28 March to make their submissions.

Writing in MaltaToday Energy Minister Miriam Dalli and ICM CEO Ismail D’amato, said 5 December marked an “important milestone” in the diversification of Malta’s energy landscape.

“We stepped ambitiously towards a cleaner, greener tomorrow,” they said.