[WATCH] Floating wind farm 10 miles out would produce electricity for all of Gozo, Miriam Dalli says

A floating wind farm situated 10 nautical miles off Gozo and planned together with the private sector would supply electricity for Gozo and parts of Malta, Miriam Dalli said.

Government’s vision for the future was based on clean sources of energy, the Energy Minister said on TVM's Xtra.

She locked horns with Nationalist Party energy spokesperson Ryan Callus over who had the best policy for the country. 

Dalli said government wanted to ensure security of supply, the diversification of sources, cheap bills for consumers and supporting consumers throughout the transition towards new energy sources.

Opposition spokesperson Ryan Callus

She added that this vision ties with the carbon-neutral plans announced by Prime Minister Robert Abela in September of last year. 

Callus spoke about the PN's energy plans announced last week, which mapped out a vision for the next 30 years. "This includes immediate measures and clean energy for the future," Callus said.

He expressed concern that the Energy Minister was burdened with allegations of corruption in the energy sector caused by her predecessors, and burdened with a locked price which did not mean the cheapest source. 

Dalli shot down the assertion of a fixed price and said the country is already buying from the cheapest source. She said that Labour had alway delivered in the energy sector and provided the cheapest tariffs for electricity. 

She said: "The future of financing in the energy sector needs to be a hybrid. It needs to be a mixture of things that can help us to invest in the infrastructure that we need."

Callus hit back and said that government incomptence had led to a failure in acquiring EU funds for a gas pipeline. He said that a PN government would reactivate interest in acquiring funding for a hydrogen pipeline. 

He insisted that EU funds were lost because the Labour government’s focus was on Electrogas and it had only submitted an application for a gas pipeline, ignoring the future technology for hydrogen.

Commenting in the programme Jason Vella, CEO for Enemalta said that the percentage of energy from soft energy was now 10% of the total source of energy. 

Director for the Institute for sustainable energy at the University of Malta Prof. Luciano Mule Stagno said the planned wind farm off Gozo would create a significant source of energy. He said that one wind turbine was equivalent to 30,000 photovoltaic panels. 

Mule Stagno argued that he felt that more was needed to address the issue of mass transit and policy makers needed to take this into consideration in their policy plans.