While the government has gone to great pains to tell us that the majority of people will only be paying a little more for their water and electricity bills, the writing is on the wall and the future does not look good.

The first thing which must be looked at is the sewage tariff which has been implemented in line with EU legislation. For the coming year, 2010, the government has announced that it will be absorbing the charge as it has been given dispensation to do so by the European Union, but we must ask the question... what about in 2011? We put this question to various government officials and the answer we got is that there is no thought of changing this state of affairs in the year 2010, but no one can answer beyond that.

“We cannot answer what we do not know,” was the general comment. Another issue which we must look at is the decision by the government in the last budget to distribute e10m to those who have tried to keep their consumption down.

This, says the government, means that a cheque will arrive in the post to offset the increase of tariffs which will bring them back to October 2008 levels. If one were to cut their consumption down by a further five per cent or so, bills will more or less remain at their current level.

It all sounds fine and dandy in practice, but the government must realise that while it will (eventually) issue the cheques, in practice, they do not really go into the kitty for the rest of the year.

The world is just coming out of recession (Malta has not yet emerged) and the laws of the market will ensure that the price of oil will increase accordingly. Once OPEC (the oil nations) see that demand increases once more, they will do as they have always done and throttle back on supply to drive the price of oil up.

The government has countered this and has worked out a formula which will see us through 2010 – but the question remains... what about 2011? Will we get a rebate again? Will the government subsidise the sewage tax again?

Will the outcome of Copenhagen mean that producing electricity in Malta will be much more expensive because of financial penalties related to emissions? These are all questions which need to be answered.

Yes it is Christmas and yes times are not the best. But there is a strong message coming across. The Climate Change deal, which will have repercussions all over the world in the medium and long-term, will go through. Perhaps the fact that it will be hammered out in the run- up to Christmas is a message in itself and this is probably the same message that the government is trying to put across.

As we have said, the government has gone to great pains to show us that it will be picking up most of the slack in 2010. But what it is also trying to tell us is that this cannot go on forever and absolutely no one will commit to anything beyond the end of the year (2010).

As we have seen a year goes by very quickly. This time last year, we were all worried about the recession. We will boldly predict that this time next year, we will all be worried sick about energy and water generation in the wider context of a world in a last ditch attempt to go green.