Any which way you look at it, it must be conceded that an extension of the lifetime of the Marsa power station is a necessary evil.

It is true that better proactive measures should have been taken years, or even decades, ago. It is also true that the relic of a power station is causing told and untold harm to both nearby residents and, in fact, the whole of the country.

It is similarly true, as the Opposition Leader recently charged, that it is “humiliating”, at least from a green perspective, that the government will have to plead with the European Union to allow it to continue polluting the air that its citizens breathe for another two years.

All this is true, but the current state of affairs is obviously inevitable. No matter how good the intentions, it would be simply physically impossible to keep the country up and running on the Delimara power station’s steam alone.

And, as much as we would have it different, no amount of griping will change this simple fact, unless we would be prepared to resort to the use of candles for the next two years.

Enemalta had looked into the prospect of an electricity interconnection with Sicily years before the concept was floated at European Union level by Malta, and the sheer cost of the project is its biggest stumbling block.

And, although the project is going ahead, it is still not altogether clear where the minimum €150 million required for the project will be sourced from, with the European Union having coughed up just €20 million toward the project out of its €4 billion kitty from the European Economic Recovery Plan.

While the continued operation of the Marsa power station is the bad news, related good news could very well be on the horizon, with the government’s change of tack in its stance on the viability of extending a natural gas pipeline to Malta, and with the prospect of the Delimara power station being run on natural gas in the future.

The tender for the now-infamous extension of the Delimara facility had, in fact, included a proviso that the extension would be able to be converted for the use of natural gas. The government’s Electricity Generation Plan for 2006 to 2015 had, in fact, pointed toward the use of natural gas as the way forward for Malta’s energy generation.

That possibility has since been shelved, due to the excessive costs involved in the project, but it hopefully won’t be too long before it is taken down and dusted off, given the Prime Minister’s recent announcement that the government was now “seriously considering” the possibility of a natural gas pipeline.

One hopes the statement was not simply aimed at cushioning the effect of the upcoming announcement that Marsa was to remain open for another two years.

While that project would be even costlier than the electricity grid interconnection with Sicily, there could very well be funding available as part of the EU’s trillion-euro financing bid to help wean the bloc off its dependency on Middle Eastern and Russian gas.

Perhaps Malta’s share from a trillion euros would be significantly higher - possibly high enough to fund at least the lion’s share of this even more ambitious project – than the measly portion, 0.5% of the global funding up for grabs, that it had received for the interconnection project.