Renewable Energy by Lino DeBono

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Renewable Energy by Lino DeBonoOur country’s authorities have been insisting for these last years for the citizens to turn to renewable energy. The whole world is passing and experiencing major climate changes with floods and fires taking over whole swathes of forests and woodlands.

Large ice sheets are drifting from the North Pole into the sea, thus the sea water level is climbing higher each and every year. Some low lying islands are already experiencing the phenomena of these raised sea levels threatening their habitat and invading their homes.

Many countries and authorities have long been warning about the critical ozone situation, sadly some the most powerful leaders in influential countries have ridiculed these findings. As a matter of fact, America, the world leading nation, under the leadership of its former President Mr Trump, opted out of this International agreement.

This bad judgement gave the doubters an easy way forward with their criticisms and negative views.

European Countries and Others

Other influential countries and groups, such as the European Union, have been pressing for more protection to the ozone layer. They have also introduced financial incentives for their citizens to adopt neutral energy sources.

Malta has also followed these incentives and is achieving some positive results.

One of these incentives, popular with the general public, or shall I say previously popular, was the introduction of the solar panels on rooftops. The Government provided subsidies to the people who opted to install these panels and paid a fair price for any surplus units of electricity.

So for these years customers were satisfied as they were reaping some value from their investments.

Problems

This situation didn’t last long though, buildings permits for higher buildings were introduced restricting sunlight to many of the solar panels. When customers complained the all too usual answer was given, “there is nothing we can do.”

The return on these expensive investments was therefore reduced to almost zero.

Secondly, after the allocated periods expired the financial rates given to these customers by the Electricity Corporation was now much less than the rate being charged by the company.

Unfairness

The average citizen who invested financially and indirectly following the general call by these local and foreign authorities to have/introduce more clean energy into our islands was greatly misled.

Investors are finding out that it was not worthwhile to have invested in these solar panels.

The authorities should at least give to these customers the same rates as those issued by the electricity company, this is only fair.

Batteries

It is also now being promoted for people to buy and install a charger, so that excess energy stored will and can be used when needed.

That is if a customer does in fact have any surplus units left after the bills are received.

In addition there are the costs of buying and installing these devices.

Conclusion

I strongly suggest that the authorities should come up with better financial incentives so that the general public will be more likely to adopt this new technology.

Without better financial incentives the widespread adoption of such technology is likely to fail.

This will depend on the authorities and the people that invested in these new energy systems. What exactly do they aspire for? Clean energy? Financial profits? Or that the citizens can have a healthier environment by expanding (FAIRLY) these and other innovations?

Lino DeBono

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    5 Responses

    1. Dietmar Treptow says:

      Well Spoted Mr. De Bono !!!
      But this is not all , what is going wrong on Malta .
      We need more people like you – common people .
      Nobody is listening to a ” Alien ” like me !

      • Lino DeBono says:

        Mr Treptow, don’t lose hope. One will be surprised what the power of the pen can do. Local or being born in another place do not matter on one’s views and opinions. The majority of the locals do appreciate the valued contributions being made by those (foreigners) who choose to live amongst us. I know of many who did and are also at present validly contributing to the general benefit of our daily lives. A couple of these in fact are Michael & his wife Tish who by themselves have initiated this so important “Gozo.News” website.

    2. Slide says:

      Lino before you write on clean energy look at the facts of such tech creates and stop listening to CNN and the rest propaganda. You talk about solar panels, do you know that in China there is a large land the size of New York State contaminated due to the manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, mobile phones,smart TVs . So what are we gaining here in terms of clean energy at the expanse of contaminated land. You talk about Trump before you tell us what the Paris accord package benefits for such a large country has while the biggest polluters China and India keep at it unchecked.

    3. Silvaticus says:

      The mining, processing and disposal of the materials used in photovoltaic panels goes together with severe pollution and high resource use.

      Considering the very low output of PV panels per area, their vulnerability to dust covering and the worsening excess of landfilled waste, I would like to propose Malta finally entering the 21st Century and set up ‘energy from waste’ incinerators (of the type used all over Northern Europe, where landfills are outlawed).

      It may make us a little less dependent of energy imports. Maybe that is exactly why it has not happened over the past decades, with some entrepreneurial ‘leaders’ not willing to risk being paid their commission by foreign energy exporters.

    4. Alan Buttigieg says:

      Spot on Lino. It is grossly unfair that now that the PV contracts expired, the Citizen is being offered a paltry for the generated power….at least they should be offered the same purchase price for each unit….12c5 not just 7c….political arrogance?

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