The Enemalta Corporation will, as of next year, face the prospect of annual fines amounting to between €30 and €45 million with the controversial new extension to the Delimara power plant that will be run on heavy fuel oil.

As from next year, the EU plans to fine companies somewhere between €20 and €30 per tonne of CO² emitted and which will not be captured by the installation.

And with heavy fuel oil being known to emit even higher concentrations of CO² than at present, the Delimara plant is expected to emit some 1.5 million tonnes of CO² per year, which could see Enemalta being fined an additional €30 to €45 million annually.

This, plus the €800 million debt that Enemalta has apparently, all of a sudden, found itself in, as well as additional questions over the actual cost of electricity that will be sourced from the European market once the electricity interconnector from Sicily is up and running, is giving rise to serious concerns over future energy prices in Malta.

The concern is that, in one form or another, such costs will trickle down to the consumer at the end of the day. In fact, invoices being sent out by ARMS, the company tasked with producing consumer utility bills, have for some time provided a box indicating the emissions the bill payer has been responsible for over the billing period.

It could very well be that the information has less to do with raising awareness among consumers of the carbon footprint their consumption habits leave behind, a worthy initiative in itself, but possibly more to do with eventually adding a new ‘emissions’ tax to consumer bills in the foreseeable future.

Moreover, it is not yet known whether the price of the 200MW that Enemalta will be purchasing through the grid will be charged at a fixed rate or whether the prices will be at the mercy of suppliers who know that Malta will be very much dependent on the supply. Nor is it known whether the electricity that Malta will purchase through the interconnector would be sourced from a plant that uses fossil fuels and as such also be subject to EU emission taxes.

Furthermore, it is still unknown what the cost of keeping a section of the Marsa power station, which is due for decommissioning, operable and well serviced and supplied with spare parts in the event of damage to the interconnector cable – damage that we have seen time and time again on undersea communications cables linking Malta to Sicily.

The answers to these and other related questions will be interesting indeed.