First offshore wind farm

TL;DR

On 22 July 2025 the Energy Ministry said Malta’s first floating wind farm, of “approximately 300MW”, would be built “beyond Malta’s territorial waters”, that three submissions had been received for the first stage, and that the plan was to inform qualifying candidates of the next phase “by the first part of next year”. We checked the facts against the project’s own documents and Eurostat data, and the timetable against what has been published since.

1. The facts hold. InterConnect Malta (ICM), the government company running the process, describes a floating wind farm of around 300 MW beyond the 12-nautical-mile limit, in an area to be declared as Malta’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Three submissions were announced on 22 July 2025, from named applicants.
2. The output claim is consistent with national data. ICM says the farm would give up to 0.8 TWh a year, about 25% of Malta’s electricity demand as it stood in 2025. That implies a 30% capacity factor and matches 25% of the 3,252 GWh Eurostat shows Malta supplied in 2025 (production plus imports); it is 27% of final consumption.
3. No public sign of the step by the stated time. The “first part of 2026” step, telling qualifying candidates they may continue, has no public notice. ICM’s news list to 3 October 2026 and its tenders page record none. It did issue a EUR 3.6 million metocean survey tender in April 2026, to gather two years of site data for developers.
4. What we cannot tell. The notice to candidates may have been sent privately, and the government may have revised the plan without publishing it. MaltaToday reported on 4 August 2025 that the minister, answering a parliamentary question, put the next stage (the invitation to dialogue) at around April 2026 and the contractor’s selection towards the end of 2027 [10]; we found no public notice of that stage either.

1. Supported
2. Largely supported
3. Not substantiated
4. Misleading
5. Contradicted

1 The claim and what we could verify

The Energy Ministry announced the result of the first stage on 22 July 2025. TVM News published the ministry’s statement and a quotation from the Minister, Miriam Dalli [1]; Newsbook published the same announcement [2]. The maintainer supplied the passages (literature/CC-029/primary-source.md) and we re-read both pages in full. The ministry’s own page and ICM’s site carry the project description [3, 4]. Only the minister’s words inside quotation marks are quoted; the rest is the ministry statement as the outlet reports it.

2 Method

Questions. (A) Is the project as described: a floating farm of about 300 MW beyond territorial waters? (B) Were there three first-stage submissions? (C) Is the stated output plausible against national demand? (D) Did the next stage happen when the plan said?

Evidence. For A and B we read the ministry statement and ICM’s own pages. For C we downloaded Malta’s electricity balance from Eurostat (nrg_cb_e, siec E7000, GWh) with fetch.py and computed the shares with calc.py (data/cc-029/checks.csv). The 2025 values carry the Eurostat provisional flag. For D we listed every post ICM published between 1 June 2025 and 6 October 2026 (22 posts, from its website’s public post list), read ICM’s tenders page, and searched the web for the project’s name; the search log is in literature/CC-029/notes.md.

The limit of D. Absence of a public notice is not proof that nothing happened: candidates can be told privately. It does show that no progress after the qualification stage has been published, which is what a pledge label judges.

Grades. Official statistics and government project documents are grade C; news and trade reports are grade D and are used to locate what was announced. Verdicts and pledge labels follow Appendix A.

3 What the evidence shows

The description. ICM’s project page says the concession covers design, construction, operation, maintenance and decommissioning of an offshore floating wind farm beyond Malta’s 12-nautical-mile territorial waters, with the substation and export cable owned by the government, “around 300MW” delivered to the 132 kV network, “up to 0.8 TWh” a year, under a 35-year agreement with a two-way contract for difference [4]. Two sites are on offer, one of which will be developed [4, 6].

The submissions. The first-stage questionnaire was issued on 5 December 2024 [5]. Its deadline, originally 28 March 2025 ◆, was extended by 115 days to 21 July 2025 after clarification requests [5a]. Three submissions followed: the Code Zero Consortium (led by SEP (Malta) Holding Ltd), Atlas Med Wind (managed by GreenIT SpA, Italy) and MCKEDRIK Sole Member Ltd (Greece) [1, 2]. ICM’s December 2024 notice said only the top five candidates would be invited to the next stage [5]; with three submissions, that limit is not a constraint.

The output. 0.8 TWh from 300 MW is a capacity factor of 30.4%, a plausible value for offshore wind. Eurostat gives Malta’s 2025 final electricity consumption as 2,970 GWh and electricity supplied (production plus imports minus exports) as 3,252 GWh, 31.7% of it imported by cable [7]. 0.8 TWh is 26.9% of consumption and 24.6% of supply, so ICM’s “25% of overall demand as it stood in 2025” [6] matches the supply measure.

The timetable. The 22 July 2025 statement set the plan: tell qualifying candidates “by the first part of next year”, while ICM prepared technical and financial criteria for them [1]. By 6 October 2026, 98 days after the end of June, the end of what we read as “the first part” of 2026, none of ICM’s 22 posts since June 2025, nor its tenders page, records a notice of qualification or of the invitation to dialogue. What ICM did publish, on 22 April 2026, was a EUR 3.6 million tender for two years of metocean measurements at both sites (deadline 21 May 2026), said to let “prospective developers” prepare proposals [6, 9]. That is progress on the project, but it is not the step the plan named.

4 Where the evidence points different ways

5 Testing the claim

6 Verdict, pledge and requests for evidence

Why. (1) The factual statements, capacity, position and number of submissions, are confirmed by the government’s own project documents and the announcement. (2) The output figure agrees with Eurostat data. (3) We rate Largely supported rather than Supported because the project is a plan, no concession has been awarded, and the capacity and site may change in the dialogue. (4) The timetable is a plan, not a fact, so it is rated under the pledge scale. Confidence is moderate because the sources are the project’s own documents and the timetable rating depends on absence of a notice.

Evidence we are asking for

• The date candidates were informed of the result of the qualification stage, and how many qualified.
• A current timetable for the invitation to participate in dialogue and the best and final offer.
• The e-tenders notice and documents for the metocean survey, and the award, if made.
• The offshore wind assumption (capacity and year) in Malta’s National Energy and Climate Plan, for comparison with 300 MW.

7 Limitations

• The ministry’s statement is read through TVM News and Newsbook; the ministry’s own release was refused to scripts. Only the minister’s words are in quotation marks.
• We read no tender documents. Capacity, position and output come from ICM’s web pages; the e-tenders portal was not read.
• The Off track label rests on the absence of a public notice, which is weaker evidence than a dated statement. Our reading of “the first part of 2026” as ending on 30 June 2026 is ours; the statement gives no date.
• “The first part of 2026” is not defined in the statement. Reading it more loosely than 30 June 2026 would shorten the gap but not remove it, and the minister’s reply of 4 August 2025 [10] placed the dialogue stage around April 2026.
• Eurostat 2025 values are provisional. ICM’s 25% is compared with supply and consumption as defined by Eurostat; ICM does not say which measure it used.
• MaltaToday’s report [10] was read through an Internet Archive copy of 4 August 2025; the live page was not readable and we did not check whether it has since been edited (its headline and its address differ: “start of 2028” and “end 2027”).
• The absence of a notice rests on ICM’s public post list and tenders page, the ministry’s release (not readable by scripts) and web searches; a notice on a page we did not read cannot be excluded.

References

1. [1] TVM News (22 Jul 2025). Three submissions presented for the first offshore wind farm concession in Malta. https://tvmnews.mt/en/news/three-submissions-presented-for-the-first-offshore-wind-farm-concession-in-malta/
2. [2] Balzan J. (22 Jul 2025, 17:58). Three firms bid for Malta’s first offshore wind farm concession. Newsbook. https://newsbook.com.mt/en/three-firms-bid-for-maltas-first-offshore-wind-farm-concession/
3. [3] InterConnect Malta. News and events list (read 6 Oct 2026). https://icm.mt/news-events/
4. [4] InterConnect Malta. Offshore Renewable Energy Project (read 6 Oct 2026). https://icm.mt/projects/offshore-renewable-energy-project/
5. [5] InterConnect Malta (5 Dec 2024). Malta launches preliminary qualification questionnaire for offshore floating wind farm project; and (27 Mar 2025) submission deadline extended [5a]. https://icm.mt/malta-launches-preliminary-qualification-questionnaire-for-offshore-floating-wind-farm-project/
6. [6] InterConnect Malta (22 Apr 2026). Offshore floating wind farm: ICM issues tender to collect data on wind, wave conditions. https://icm.mt/offshore-floating-wind-farm-icm-issues-tender-to-collect-data-on-wind-wave-conditions/
7. [7] Eurostat. Supply, transformation and consumption of electricity (nrg_cb_e), Malta, retrieved 6 Oct 2026. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/nrg_cb_e/default/table
8. [8] offshoreWIND.biz (23 Jul 2025). Three applications submitted in Malta’s first offshore wind tender. https://www.offshorewind.biz/2025/07/23/three-applications-submitted-in-maltas-first-offshore-wind-tender
9. [9] offshoreWIND.biz (21 Apr 2026). Malta opens EUR 3.6 million offshore wind metocean survey tender. https://www.offshorewind.biz/2026/04/21/malta-opens-eur-3-6-million-offshore-wind-metocean-survey-tender
10. [10] Azzopardi K. (4 Aug 2025). Miriam Dalli: Offshore wind farm contractor to be selected by start of 2028 (title as archived; the address ends “end_2027” and the body says selection “towards the end of 2027”). MaltaToday. Read through the Internet Archive copy of 4 Aug 2025; the live page returns 403. https://web.archive.org/web/20250804160719/https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/136333/miriam_dalli_offshore_wind_farm_contractor_to_be_selected_by_end_2027
11. [11] Miżien. Calculation script and outputs: tools/cc-029-report/calc.py; data/cc-029/checks.csv.

Appendix A: series standards and verdict scale

Every investigation in this series follows the same rules so that verdicts are comparable and challengeable.

Pledge labels

A pledge is a promise of future action, so it cannot be true or false when it is made. It gets one of these labels instead of a verdict, with the date of the evidence behind it.

Confidence

High: multiple independent lines of evidence agree. Moderate: evidence is relevant but incomplete or indirect. Low: evidence is thin, second-hand or conflicting.

Evidence grades

A experiment · B observational study with a control or gradient · C review, guidance or official statistics · D assertion or anecdote. ◆ marks a source known only second-hand.

Standards

• Quote the speaker, not the headline, with outlet and date, and link the original where possible.
• Separate the claim from the evidence offered for it, and say who made which statement.
• Grade the evidence and show differing views side by side where the evidence is unsettled.
• State what we could not access or verify, and what would change the verdict either way.
• Ask for the missing evidence in specific, answerable requests.
• Offer a right of reply where a check finds a claim Not substantiated, Misleading or Contradicted (or a pledge Not measurable, Off track or Missed), before wider circulation, and append responses.
• Correct errors openly with a version number and change log.
• Whistle-blow only on evidence: a verdict of Misleading or Contradicted requires documents or data that can be shown, not inference.
• Check every side. Government, opposition, NGOs and developers are held to the same standard.

Appendix B: revision log