Will Es Murterar Become Another Power Station Ruin?

There is a sight which is distinctly incongruous when one is walking in the Albufera Nature Park. Look in one direction and looming above the vegetation is the chimney of Es Murterar: the power station abuts one edge of the nature park.

It has been there for forty years, an ominous presence looming over the tranquility and environmental sensitivity of Albufera. Once upon a time the coal trucks went through Puerto Alcudia in order to deliver their loads. Since the Bellevue bypass was built, the trucks have been in convoy passing at the foot of the Puig de Sant Marti. I've not personally noticed but I am told that coal dust flies and settles. Even covered, the trucks can allow particles to escape.

And for all these years there has been the Es Murterar roar. At times there can seem to be no rhyme nor reason for this bellowing. Guests at the Lagotel in Las Gaviotas are among those who have noticed it and have therefore complained about it.

There is something else which is incongruous: Balearic energy policy. A region blessed with ample sunlight (as well as other potential sources of renewable energy) can manage a mere two per cent of electricity production from renewables. There are parts of Spain where it is one hundred per cent.

The Balearic government, which has for so long spoken about renewables, now has a clear plan. In the fight against climate change there will be zero emissions by 2050. One trusts that this won't be too late. Much earlier than this - by 2020 - two pollutant groups at Es Murterar will be shut down; basically, this means that half the production lines will disappear within three years. The previous government, that of José Ramón Bauzá, had targeted 20% renewable production by 2020, a goal in line with EU ambitions. Good words and of course nothing happened. It was always possible to hide behind the shield of austerity and economic crisis. Alternative energy costs money and requires investment.

There is also a cost involved with the progressive closure of Es Murterar. The regional government is attempting to calculate it. If the costs are reasonable, says Balearic energy minister Marc Pons, then the national energy ministry will look upon the plan favourably.

A further cost is the one that affects the workforce. The government says that there will be job relocation. It has in mind the photovoltaic plants either planned or under way. One of these is by Es Murterar; others are in Manacor, Llucmajor and Ciutadella in Menorca. The workers don't believe the government. They reckon that there is little realistic chance of relocation. They want a slower process. They accept that coal cannot simply carry on, but the government's timeline is, in the word of the workers, "precipitous". They believe that the plan for Es Murterar is being designed with elections in mind. These elections are less than two years away.

Up to 800 jobs, both direct and indirect, could be affected. One also has to wonder about the impact on the port. Salvem el Moll, which has been agitating about the coal shipments (considering them to be not entirely legal), will doubtless be delighted, but the eventual loss of coal will be bound to have an impact on the port's commercial operations. There again, it is surely a price that not only has to be paid but should be paid. The economics of energy transition can never be wholly benign for all business or indeed all jobs.

Endesa agrees with the workers. The plan is too hasty. As a company it anticipates an end to its coal plants by 2035. It has an alternative - an investment scheme to modify the most polluting groups. The current politics of renewable energy will probably scupper this.

And eventually, what will become of Es Murterar? The roar will be quietened. It will fall silent. No more will the coal trucks rumble along the bypass, inadvertently releasing particles. Es Murterar will then sit there, like Alcanada has ever since Es Murterar was commissioned. Will they be arguing over its future at the end of this century?

Rattle And Hum: Air-conditioning

Could you live without air-conditioning in the heat of a Mallorcan summer? Many make do without it. Like me. I rarely even put it on in the car. To some extent, it has to do with home design and situation, especially the interaction of the position of the sun during the day and any shielding, such as an intervening terrace roof. But even without the influence of direct sunlight, the temperatures are high.

Air-con is hardly cheap to run. It can also be expensive to install. A restaurant owner recently explained to me that a new system had set him back 50,000 euros. That's a lot of lunches and dinners to be sold. Home units may not come to anything like this amount, but neither are they inexpensive.

Somewhere still lurking in the Wacky Department of the Spanish Government is a proposal for temperatures in bars and restaurants, one that would also insist on doors being closed and operated automatically, in order to limit changes to temperatures inside. The proposal was that interior temperatures would not be lower than 26 degrees (79 Fahrenheit) during the summer months. It was and is a mad proposal, but the thinking behind it was to conserve energy and to be environmentally friendly. It is still possible that it might actually be passed into law, at a stroke rendering air-con units more or less redundant. That it seems to have been put on the back burner, so to speak, probably has more to do with the politics of the smoking ban than any desire to save the planet.

Air-con has become pretty much de rigueur for bars and for hotels. Its presence forms part of the promotional mix. "We have air-conditioning." But not all hotels do, especially the older stock. I am led to believe that Bellevue - all 1400 plus apartments of it - could finally be kitted out with air-con. The new owners have an air-con company in their portfolio. It would still represent a massive investment, even given some favourable inter-company transfer pricing, to say nothing of the need for a dedicated system of power generation and also the charges to the guests.

In 2003, the summer of outrageous heat, the power system in Mallorca gave up one day in August. The outage lasted for up to eleven or twelve hours in parts of the island. We are told that there is plenty of capacity now to meet demand, but just think about the level of supply - for all those hotels, restaurants, shops, homes and everything else. One can argue that demand for electricity is very much lower in winter, thanks to all those cold hotels being closed. Open them all up and the gross demand for energy on the island would be significantly greater than it currently is. Perhaps this is a good reason for there only being limited winter tourism.

Air-con units and the demand for electricity have now moved into overdrive if not overload, but the temperatures are still not particularly excessive, despite an average two-degree above normal for the start of July. The fear is that, somewhere down the line, temperatures will become excessive and normal. The demand would be colossal.

The good news is that the island's power stations now have capacity, at least for current needs and a foreseeable future not sent haywire through climate change. The new one in Palma, that was opened in 2006, should be capable of handling estimated increases in demand of up to 6% per year. The growth in demand had actually gone up by a third in the five years before the plant started operating. The arrival of natural gas should be an advantage, albeit not to the plant in Alcúdia, which is coal-fired and which remains a bone of contention for environmentalists - Greenpeace have, in the past, tried to stop the shipping of coal to Mallorca.

The answer to the original question is almost certainly no. No you couldn't live without air-conditioning, and it may be that air-con becomes a matter of life or death, if we are to believe the predictions as to temperature rise. For now though, you can be sure that there will not be a collapse of the power system and that the air-con unit can rattle and hum away, racking up the electricity bill. There again, you could always keep the windows open. Or could you? Some would argue that an open window just lets in warm air, while at night in fly the mosquitoes. And then there is always that mad proposal. To air-con or not to air-con? Who'd be one who wants to save the planet?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

(Car) Parklife

Further to yesterday's note about the plan to get rid of the front line parking area in Puerto Pollensa, there is more to be said about the whole scheme which would envisage the moving of the boat maintenance area and also an upgrading of the tourist office. On this latter point, it is said that the office is "obsolete" and requires modernising. This is one way of saying that it was inadequate from the moment it was conceived, and its construction was not that long ago; three years maybe. Obsolescence occurs swiftly in the Pollensa tourist office world. Modernising should mean making bigger. The office is supremely well located, but it is far too small and has insufficient storage space, so improvements should be welcome. The only problem is likely to be how long they take to effect them. When the old tourist office was closed, a temporary one was set up in the municipal building, and the whole process seemed to drag on interminably before the now office was finally completed. Yet it was hardly a major job of construction; the office is little more than a shack.

In respect of the mooted planning closure, it is said that this parking was theoretically intended for boat users. This, of course, is far from the case, but if it was the theory before, what is the theory and indeed practice meant to be now. Where would boat users park?

The report from the "Diario" yesterday does rather give the game away in terms of the thinking behind the elimination of the parking. It says that the pedestrianisation has the objective of progressively removing cars from the front line. Of course it does.

However, things are never quite as obvious as they might seem in the wonderful world of Pollensa town hall. The proposal for the elimination of the parking, and all the rest, comes from a councillor with one of the political groupings in the administration, namely the PSM (the socialist party of Mallorca). The mayor, who represents the nationalists, says that there is no such plan, and goes on to say that the town hall is going to create more parking in the La Gola area.

So let's be clear. Here we have a councillor, one responsible for culture, which does suggest that issues pertaining to infrastructure may actually be outside his brief, making an announcement to the Mallorcan press about something that the rest of the town hall have no intention of doing, or that is how it is now being presented. What exactly is going on? Is it simply some maverick going off on a complete and unofficial tangent, or might there be some substance to the plan? The mayor suggests that there isn't. It all seems very odd.


AND OVER IN ALCUDIA...
Various worthies gathered yesterday in Alcúdia's auditorium to present the project for the conversion of the old power station by the commercial port: it is meant to become a museum of science and technology and a "great icon in the north of the island" (I quote in translation from the report in the "Diario"). The only problem is that they haven't got the money in place, or rather they haven't, as yet, established exactly how the 23 million euros project is to be financed. Which does also seem a bit odd, that is that they would present the project without actually knowing when it's likely to start.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Here are some Germans singing after drinking - fabulous, I'm sure you'll agree (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7hg9ZtwaLM). Today's title - no word in brackets and who do you have? The video did of course strongly feature a car.

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Sometimes In Winter

Right now you’d be forgiven for thinking that it is not winter here. Of course, it isn’t; it’s autumn. But as I’ve said before, come the end of October, it’s winter where the tourist seasons are concerned. There again - clear blue skies, warm sun. This can’t be winter. The virtual absence of tourists confirms that it is, as does the activity around the unemployment offices. Queues of people. At least they make for a certain life about the place.

These queues. All these people going to claim their “paro”. It looks kind of humbling, but it’s not. And it is all sorts of people. There is no stigma. Indeed quite the contrary. The paro is almost like work. Do your months in summer and then cut along for the winter months of government benefit. It’s routine, it’s normal, it’s part of the work pattern. There is almost a professionalism to getting the paro. You see folk with nicely prepared files and document holders as though they were going to make some sort of marketing presentation.

What is there to do though? Once the season ends, it takes a few days to adjust to the sheer nothingness. But this isn’t actually the case. Over the next few days and weeks in November are the Pollensa, Muro and Sa Pobla fairs. There is the series of “Hivern a Mallorca” (winter in Mallorca) events - guided tours of the likes of the Roman town, to the beaches of Barcares and to mountains; concerts and theatre. In December there are the fiestas in the first week and then Christmas and new year. January has Three Kings and Sant Antoni, and come February things are starting to get in gear a bit. Winter - not so long. (Note: I have started to enter Hivern a Mallorca events on the WHAT’S ON BLOG again.)


Just further to yesterday. Why are they wanting to relocate the power station? What does this have to do with the coastline? The answer is I don’t know. What I do know is if you put it anywhere else and if it relies on coal as it currently does, you will continue to get the environmental damage from the filthy trucks that move the coal around. And what’s with this more than five-square-metres business? How do they figure that out? What are they going to do - mark out lots on the beach of a sufficient area, and when they get filled up turn people away? So much for access to all that public area.


QUIZ
Yesterday - Dido. Today’s title? The one I’m after is from which American horns-based jazz-rock act of yonks ago.

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