Handaq solar farm near Gaffarena’s contested land

A plot adjacent to the Handaq land controversially awarded to property owner Mark Gaffarena in the Old Mint Street scandal, is now earmarked for a massive solar farm.

Gaffarena has been awarded a permit to erect 3,332 photovoltaic panels on 860 greenhouses, over an 11,000sq.m tract of agricultural land.

The entire plot is 29,000sq.m, on which Gaffarena is also planning an agri-tourism complex.

Next door is the 10,000sq.m plot handed to him in an illegal €1.65 million cash-and-land exchange for the government expropriation of his half-share in a Valletta palazzo that housed a government office, in 2015. The land is being contested in a case instituted by the Prime Minister. Gaffarena’s solar farm and agri-tourism project was objected to by the Environment and Resources Authority, which said the extent of the farm was incompatible with the surrounding rural context and would have a visual impact. “Proposals for such large-scale solar farms in the countryside should be discouraged until all alternatives within the development zone, industrial areas and similarly committed sites are exhausted,” the ERA said.

Through its green light, the Planning Authority also sanctioned various illegal structures which had been subject to planning enforcement since 2003; while also making it conditional that the greenhouses be used for agricultural production.

Indeed, Gaffarena is a registered as a farmer tilling over 71 tumoli of land.

Trees will be grown along the road to minimise the visual impact of the fully demountable greenhouses. The PA’s rules encourage the development of solar farms on the roofs of buildings and inside disused quarries. In this case the solar farm is being approved on the basis of the rural policy which regulates greenhouse developments.  

According to the draft National Energy and Climate Plan, the growth of the renewable sector in Malta has been stunted by planning policies which encourage the redevelopment of two or three-storey buildings into multi-storey apartment blocks. This leads to an increase in the frequency and depth of shadowing of rooftops.

With Malta still struggling to meet its commitments on renewable energy, the pressure to locate solar power installations in the countryside has increased, simply because urban rooftops are increasingly shadowed by adjacent apartment blocks.