Last week I broke my self-imposed rule of attending only those activities which are fun or fruitful. On a scorching hot day I turned up at a local hotel where a seminar entitled 'Green Jobs: What Prospects' was being organised by the Employment and Training Corporation.

Green jobs - just in case you were wondering - are jobs in the environmental sectors of the economy and include posts related to implementing environmentally conscious design, policy, technology and research. And no, such jobs are not just about growing organic tomatoes and making handbags out of recycled felt. They offer employment potential in a sector which affects people's health and quality of life, so what's not to like?

Interest in green jobs is not the exclusive province of eco-fundamentalists and tree-huggers either. Those Kyoto-rebels, the Americans, introduced a Green Jobs Act last year and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both promised to create thousands of such jobs. I wanted to see what we are doing about green jobs on this side of the Atlantic , so off I trooped to my first seminar in years.

Following an introductory speech by the pleasant ETC CEO Sue Vella, I sat down amid a sea of men in suits and tuned in to what Robert Strauss was saying. He is the head of the EU Employment Strategy Unit and was on a flying visit. All was well while he talked about creating economically and socially stable jobs in the environmental sector, but I noticed a few puzzled faces when he mentioned the low-carb economy. It took a few moments for them to realise that he was talking about a low carbon economy and not one dominated by Atkins' diet low-carbohydrate products.

Social Policy Minister John Dalli took to the podium next. His speech -the only one reported in the local press - was one of those standard pieces which seem to roll off ministerial conveyor belts. It contained much of the placatory waffle of similar speeches as we were told that the environment and the economy are topmost priorities and that sustainability is key. He mentioned Smart City .

This baffled a few people present because Smart City is as eco-efficient and sustainable as JPO is credible. To date there are no plans for Smart City to have its own energy substation which could utilise the heat dissipated in a combined heat and power system to provide more energy and up efficiency. Instead, Smart City will be linked to the national grid - sucking energy like a giant leech.

Maybe you don't give a monkey's about it. I didn't, until someone pointed out a couple of lines in the Enemalta Corporation Electricity Generation Plan for the next seven years.

This states that after 2007 there will be a shortfall in generation capacity resulting in power outages in peak months. That means power cuts when it gets really hot. And that's not taking the massive energy needs of Mater Dei and Smart City into account.

But let's forget the dismal prospect of 80s-style power cuts in the sweltering summer of 2008 and go back to Dalli. "We have to tap the environmental sector," he continued, "but we cannot do it alone. We have to be prepared". I'm a big fan of the Boy Scouts and their 'Be Prepared' motto, but I tend to think that it's the government which should have been prepared. Careful planning, investment in renewable energy sources and incentives, would have helped to avert the oncoming energy crisis where we are faced with spiralling fuel costs and where a cable to the European grid is being described as a lifeline.

During the coffee break, a businessman who has spent the past 10 years researching and developing renewable energy technology laughed out loud when I mentioned the cable. He had attended a conference where he met people from the principal Italian energy company. The Italians were upset: Their national football team had crashed out of the European Championship and Italy was experiencing power shortages. It is dependent on other countries for its energy supply.

My friend told me that our energy strategy consists of hooking up to Italy which is hooked up to other countries which can switch off the supply when they feel like it. I suppose this is true. The Enemalta plan says that this "could impact on reliability and security of supply". Silvio Berlusconi or Nicolas Sarkozy could shut us down.

It didn't sound good, so I downed some coffee and croissants and made it back to my seat to listen to interventions from the floor. There were two men who evidently have a passion for what they do - their business is alternative energy. They have the ideas and are ready to invest in this sector, but they can't get hold of trained personnel. There is no university or MCAST course dealing with renewable energy. Research and development are poorly funded.

Hydrologist Marco Cremona stood up and reeled off a number of instances where the government ignores EU directives on energy efficiency and sustainability. Godwin Cassar from the Malta Environment and Planning Authority explained that we are on a learning curve.

That's when it hit me - the sense of having been here and heard this before. It came back to me then. Another conference, another time. Different hotel but approximately the same topic. Someone had asked why we weren't researching and training people in the field of renewable energy. And the government representative on the panel had replied, "We're on a learning curve". Some curve.

Ms. Claire Bonello

6th July 2008 - Opinion - Times of Malta