Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1347847
9 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 MARCH 2021 INTERVIEW for trying out new energy ide- as. This fund pays the investors – in our case, the commercial partners in that consortium – something like 50 to 60% of the overall cost. So even if the technology itself is still expensive… well, that's the whole point of the Innova- tion Fund. It gives us the chance to try it out anyway; and help to mature the technology. This has enabled the idea of floating wind farms, of the kind proposed today, to have already been tested; and in some places – like Portugal, and in the North Sea - they have already been in- stalled. Even if it remains more expen- sive than conventional methods, for now: there is still a very good chance that, in four or five years' time, Malta will be able to install offshore windfarms…not just because of the Innovation Fund; but also because they would be commercially viable, in and of themselves. So yes: it is a viable option to- day; and it is likely to become more viable in future. One other question-mark around renewable energy – not just wind, but also solar – is whether it can ever generate enough power to replace more conventional methods alto- gether. Has technology found a solution to this problem, too? Will we ever become 100% re- liant on renewables; and if so, what timeframes are we look- ing at? You have to bear in mind that, while wind produces energy – like solar - it doesn't produce it all the time. Solar, for example, is like clockwork: it starts pro- ducing in the morning; peaks at noon; and subsides by evening. And in Malta, it's quite sunny all year round – the difference, from year to year, works out at only one or two per cent – so the amount of energy generated can be predicted quite accurate- ly. Wind, on the other hand, is less predictable. Again, Malta is a windy country: but it still de- pends on when the wind blows: which in turn varies a lot more, from year to year. But then, it has it advantages. There will be times when wind produces as much energy as solar, at the same time; but more important- ly, it can also produce energy at night. So it's a good thing to have a mix of energy sources. But as to how much energy they produce: that relies mainly on storage. If you have enough storage, the amount of energy you can generate becomes prac- tically unlimited. But storage has its own challenges… I imagine one of them would be lack of space… More price than space, I would say. If there was a cheap way to produce batteries, you could take all of the footprint of the Delimara power station – when, in 10 or 20 years, it becomes re- dundant – and replace it with huge container-loads of bat- tery-banks. It would probably take the same amount of space. At present, however, the price for lithium batteries remains an obstacle; though it is falling by double-digit percentages every year. We did a study, not too long ago, which concluded that: given two or three years, it will no longer be as prohibitively ex- pensive as it was at the time. But it's not just batteries. There are other technologies: for example, compressed air. In fact, another group at the Uni- versity of Malta has developed a proprietary technology called 'FLASC', designed specifically for offshore windfarms. Basi- cally, it consists of huge under- water vats, which store energy using a hydro-pneumatic liquid piston. Electricity is used to pump water into a closed cham- ber containing pre-charged air; and the pressurised water is re- leased through a hydraulic tur- bine to generate power. So there are available options; but like I said: it always boils down to cost. As long as we manage to keep the price of en- ergy at around 10c per kilowatt hour, it will be viable. We're not there yet; but we're getting very, very close. And there are other sources of alternative energy, too: though not all of them are applicable to Malta's specific context. We cannot contemplate hydro-elec- tric power, for instance, because we have no mountains or riv- ers… We do, however, have the sea; and one other technology that is often mentioned is the gen- eration of power from waves. Is that also being considered, in Malta's energy-mix? Actually, we had done a pro- ject about 10 years ago – and we're working on another one today – to measure the wave-re- source in Malta. Unfortunately, it's not ideal in the Mediterrane- an: compared to, say, the North Atlantic. But it could still be a possibility, in future. However, solar is here now. Wind is here now. And offshore wind is around four to five years away from being a mature, com- mercially-competitive technol- ogy. Offshore solar – which are also working on, at the moment – is probably a bit behind that, as we are still at research stage. But again: the technology to place photovoltaic panels on floating platforms is not, in itself, 'rock- et science'. The challenge is to make it cheap. Wave technology, on the oth- er hand, is probably 10 years away, or more. Because there is no commercially viable wave energy generator on the market, right now… Coming back to the earlier question about 'space': it might not be an issue for energy stor- age; but it still forces us to con- sider offshore options instead of land-based ones. There was, however, a proposal to utilise Malta's roof-space for solar power generation. Has anything come of this idea, in practice? The official statistics haven't been published yet; but the orig- inal target was to produce 180 megawatts, from rooftop solar panels, by 2020. To put that into perspective: the Delimara power station produces 200 me- ga-watts; so we are talking about a significant amount of solar en- ergy. I'm not sure if we reached that target; but we are definite- ly very, very close. And there is still a lot of unutilised roof- space available: factories, com- mercial premises… the Ta' Qali Stadium… there are so many options. So we could easily add another 100 megawatts, simply by utilising our rooftops more. Coming back to your earlier question, then, about wheth- er we will ever be 100% reliant on renewable energy: if you fast-forward 20 years, to a time when the technology becomes affordable, and Malta already has offshore windfarms, off- shore solar panels, and rooftop solar power generation – to- gether with sufficient storage capacity – then the answer is: Yes. It is possible; in fact, the only thing holding us back, right now, is the cost of storage… Meanwhile, there are also questions surrounding our cur- rent (non-renewable) energy model. Malta's power station currently relies on a supply of LPG gas; but the government's application for EU funds, for a second Malta-Italy pipeline, have been rejected: on the grounds that preference is be- ing given to hydrogen. Does this mean we have to now con- vert our existing plant to a new technology? And if so: isn't the choice of hydrogen a little arbi- trary? Hydrogen is not a mature tech- nology either, yet. But the EU is pushing in that direction; and so is Japan, the USA, and others. All the same, however, if we're going to go for a gas pipeline an- yway – because that is the plan, regardless of EU funding – mak- ing it 'hydrogen-ready' would, I guess, hedge our bets. If hydrogen becomes the next- best thing, and our next power station runs on hydrogen - or, alternatively, is we start using hydrogen to power our cars: which is already a possibility, as companies like Toyota are start- ing to invest heavily in hydrogen fuel-cell cars – then having a hydrogen-ready pipeline would certainly be a good idea. Having said this, I am by no means an expert on pipelines; but I suspect that the percent- age increase, from an LPG to an LPG+hydrogen pipeline, is not a huge amount. So overall, it makes sense. And let's be honest. When it comes to EU funds: if the shape has to be a circle, but what you have is a square… then you make the square fit into the cir- cle…