By Martin Hellicar
GREENPEACE yesterday urged the government to open the door to wind power and help fight the scourge of global warming.
“Wind power is a very real and credible solution that can be adopted right now,” Karl Mallon, Greenpeace’s director of energy solutions, said at a Nicosia press conference yesterday morning.
The international environmental pressure group presented a study suggesting ten per cent of the world’s electricity needs could be met by wind power by the year 2020.
Mallon said the Mediterranean basin was already beginning to feel the effects of global warming (prolonged droughts, flooding) and things would only get worse if nothing was done to curb carbon dioxide emissions.
“At the present rate of fossil fuel consumption, in 30 years time we will be reaching the danger point, where ecosystems may no longer be able to cope,” Mallon warned.
Greenpeace believes that switching to clean, renewable energy sources need not cost the state a penny. Foreign companies would jump at the chance to sell power to the Electricity Authority (EAC) if there was a fixed, well-publicised, price offered, Mallon said. He said wind power was cheap enough to compete “aggressively” with the oil-generated equivalent in a liberalised market place.
The executive director of the European Wind Energy Association, Arthouros Zavros, agreed.
“It is not a question of the state doing it, the private sector, given the right framework, develops renewables,” Zavros told the press conference.
“Wind power is the great energy success story of last few years,” he said, adding that the industry was now worth $2 billion a year and had grown by 66 per cent in 1998.
Zavros said there was also a vast potential for using solar and biomass power in Cyprus.
The key, Mallon said, was adopting a state policy that would open the way for renewables.
“If the policy is right, then you can unlock a huge potential energy market,” the Greenpeace expert said. Mallon said Germany, with a similar winds regime to Cyprus, topped the world wind power league.
Greenpeace suggests the government consider renewables as an alternative to completing phases two and three of the new £1 billion Vassiliko power station.
Commerce Ministry energy expert Ioannis Christis said the government was all for renewables and would allow private firms to sell power to the national grid.
He said the ministry was currently drawing up a pricing system for private firms to sell power to the EAC. Christis said a German firm had already applied to start a wind farm and was currently carrying out trials in selected sites.
EAC officer Achilleas Stephanou said the authority was carrying out its own wind energy trials. But he also questioned the reliability of wind power, suggesting winds were too variable to provide constant electricity flows.
