Brussels warns Malta on renewable energy, government says all laws fully transposed

The European Commission has sent a reasoned opinion to Malta and three other member states, for not complying with their legal obligation to inform Brussels of their transposition of the Renewable Energy directive.

The countries will have to reply within two months of the opinion under pain of being referred to the Court of Justice.

The EU recently revealed data that shows Malta is still producing only 0.4 of its gross final energy consumption from renewable energy sources. This needs to grow to 10% by 2020.

The Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs said in a reaction that it had maintained regular consultation with the Commission on the transposition of this Directive and that all the necessary transposition measures were adopted with legal notices pertaining to the electricity and natural gas markets, rules on electricity and heating from RE sources, and rules on the promotion of energy from RE sources. "Malta has notified the European Commission of these measures," Pullicino said.

Increasing the share of renewable energy to 20% in the EU energy consumption by 2020 relies on the commitment of member states to fully implement the requirements of EU legislation.

The Renewable Energy Directive (2009/28/EC) had to be transposed by members by 5 December 2010. "The timely transposition of this Directive is a priority for the Commission, especially since unnecessary delays in implementing it may jeopardize the achievement of the EU renewable energy objective," the Commission said.

Cyprus, Ireland, Malta and Slovenia have not informed the Commission of all the measures necessary to fully transpose the Directive into their national legislation.

According to the Directive, each Member State has to reach individual targets contributing to the overall 20% share of renewable energy in energy consumption. To reach these targets, member states have to lay down rules, for example for improving the grid access for electricity from renewable energy sources, the administrative and planning procedures, information and training of installers.

Government has initiated a public consultation process on a plan to install a gigantic 54MW hexagonal floating wind-power station, which is being fine-tuned by Stockholm technology developer Hexicon.

Moored in deep waters off  Malta's northeast coast, the structure would bristle with 36 turbines - a 120-metre-tall horizontal-axis 6.5MW machine on each of its six corners, and a further 30 500kW vertical-axis units. It would be the largest single offshore wind complex in the world.

A 200-megawatt interconnector will also will link Malta to Sicily and is to be operational by 2013.