Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1507380
8 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 SEPTEMBER 2023 NEWS Power to the people, says co-op Malta's cooperatives federation want to free up public buildings for renewable energy projects that can be owned by citizens, not companies. Energy co-op pioneer Dirk Vansintjan tells MATTHEW VELLA why citizens can be empowered to become energy producers themselves. IN Belgium, a federation of energy cooperatives has been granted a green light to access nothing short of 20% of the country's prospective tender for offshore wind energy. A gargantuan €100 million has been shored up by some 34 local cooperatives across the regions of Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia. These energy co-ops already generate hundreds of giga- watt-hours that power tens of thousands of households in Flanders alone. Now they are confident they can find addi- tional finance to invest up to €445 million in the Belgian wind turbine concessions. It is a groundbreaking moment for citizen-led sustainable energy. But crucially, says Dirk Van- sintjan – the president of the European energy co-op fed- eration REScoop – it is the Belgian government that has hived off a portion of energy infrastructure for investment by co-ops. "We asked for it... and they gave it to us," he says. And it is for that reason that Vansintjan is explaining to En- ergy Minister Miriam Dalli in Malta why EU directives on renewable energy say member state governments "must" – emphasis on the conditional clause – also provide budding co-ops in Malta an enabling framework that allows citizens to own and generate their own renewable energy projects. But for that to happen, pro- spective co-ops need the key to the attic and get access to as many rooftops as possible for PV panels to generate solar energy. It would be a game-changer, says John Mallia, the president of the Malta Cooperatives Fed- eration, who invited Vansint- jan to Malta. For Vansintjan, who at the start of the 1990s was looking for land for his organic farm in the village of Rotselaar, outside the university town of Leuven, it started with an old water mill he had restored with help from State subsidies. "It started around my kitchen table with just 10 people – we bought the water mill, powered by a flow- ing river, to generate energy. It powered a village of 120 fami- lies," he says. But the energy companies would not allow them to con- sume the power they generated – and so started Vinsantjin's lobbying efforts to get rid of these obstacles, together with experts from the nearby uni- versities, that got the Green Party to table a law in the Sen- ate. That pioneering spirit in 1991 has led to Vinsantjin's co-op Ecopower claiming over 57,000 households today pow- ered with around 100GWh: 70% hails from some 24 wind turbines, providing 1.7% of the regional energy mix alone. "We stopped the drain of en- ergy money that left our local economy to go for imported gas in Russia. Since co-ops do not generate profits, the ac- cumulated surplus is reinvest- ed," Vinsantjin, a founder of the local Green Party and an anti-nuclear campaigner since the 1970s, adds. REScoop today represents at least eight similar federations from across Europe, covering around 4,000 renewable ener- gy projects, owned by co-ops or similar legal entities, and Vinsantjin says the idea is far from recent. "Some members hail from organisations who have been around since the early days of electrification, formed by vil- lagers in rural areas who had been left behind and needed to solve their problem them- selves. Denmark alone, Vinsantjin says, leads the pack with 70% of heating needs being sup- plied by 320 entities, of which 300 are cooperatives. Dirk Vinsintjan (left) with John Mallia