Reference is made to the comment piece by Charles Mangion titled “Safeguarding our children’s health” (TMIS, 31 May).

Natural gas is not available in Malta at present, and it is unlikely to be available before 2015, at the earliest. In the meantime, the only practical alternative to operate the generating plant is liquid fuel. This is not a choice between natural gas and low sulphur oil as a fuel, but rather between two types of generating plants that can both use natural gas.

However, if natural gas is not available, gas turbines can only use fuels such as expensive gasoil, while the diesel engine plant selected can use both low sulphur oil and gasoil. Both types of plant will conform fully to EU Directives on emissions, and both would use the best available technology to reduce emissions. It is very strange that the quoted, unnamed, local experts in electricity generation have not pointed this out.

If and when natural gas becomes available in Malta, both the gas turbines and the diesel engines could be converted to use gas. However, as already stated numerous times, at present there is no suitable local natural gas supply, and the gas turbines proposed as an alternative would use gasoil, with almost the same CO² emissions as low sulphur oil diesel engines. This is not a case of using gas or HFO but of using gasoil or HFO. Once natural gas is available, both types of plant can use it.

While it is true that the maintenance costs of both types of generating plant will be reduced if natural gas is available, it does not necessarily follow that the operating costs will decrease. The cost of natural gas is generally dependent on the cost of fuel oil, and on the cost of the infrastructure necessary to import the gas. In Malta’s case, with a relatively low expected consumption of natural gas, the infrastructure costs are disproportionately high and this will be reflected in the cost of gas in Malta.

Even if the plant is converted to natural gas in 2015, the operating costs of the diesel engine plant, when taken over a lifetime using the net present value method financial analysis, are lower than the operating costs of the gas turbine plant.

Generation of electricity by the proposed HFO fired plant, even with the cost of emissions reduction included, amounts to two-thirds of the cost associated with gasoil-fired gas turbines.

This results in lower costs and lower tariffs with effectively the same CO² emissions.

The selected generating plant will contribute to reducing CO² emissions by up to 400,000tonnes annually (about 20 per cent of the total produced annually) and if and when natural gas is available as a fuel in Malta, these engines can be converted to operate on gas.

Ian Vella

Public Relations Officer

Enemalta Corporation