In August last year the government announced bold plans to generate 20 per cent of Malta’s energy from deep water turbines, but little progress was made to reach this target in the past year.
Resources and Infrastructure Minister Ninu Zammit told parliament on Tuesday that pilot projects being conducted abroad show that this technology can eventually be applied to Malta.
But the government was advised by the Malta Resources Authority to wait until the new technology is tried and tested overseas.
“The government is following these developments so that the project is implemented at the right time,” Zammit told parliament when replying a question by Nationalist MP Joseph Cassar.
Although the technology is yet to be developed, nine companies had expressed interest in the Maltese government’s call for international interest in 2006, an MRA spokesperson told MaltaToday.
In 2006 government had excluded the less expensive land-based and near-shore wind farms, due to their visual impact.
Throughout the world, offshore wind farms are constructed at depths of less than 20 metres, but a deep water wind farm is currently being developed in deeper waters in Murray Firth in northern Scotland.
Malta currently derives less than one per cent of its energy needs from renewable sources of energy.