The news that Malta’s electricity consumers have become the European Union’s biggest energy savers went by mostly overlooked this week. Another tediously boring set of statistics, and certainly not worthy of big headlines. But upon closer inspection, there is an awful lot to the story after all.

According to an EU survey released this week, the Maltese, out of the whole of Europe, were the ones to have cut down the most on electricity consumption over the past year.

The actual figures are interesting, and revealing. In brief, over the past year a whopping 87 per cent of the Maltese population, 16 per cent more than in the previous survey, said they had cut down on lighting and on the use of domestic appliances. 68 per cent, an increase of 21 per cent, cut down on the use of heating and/or air conditioning and 19 per cent, almost twice as many as in the last survey, took initiatives to save energy at work.

The Maltese also had the lowest rate of those who had taken no such initiatives over the last year. That rate was of just three per cent, down from the 15 per cent who had taken no such action in last year’s survey.

In these four areas the Maltese were at the absolute top of the EU’s energy saving leagues - an impressive showing but not necessarily one that indicates the country has, all of a sudden, ‘gone green’.

In fact, when it comes to vehicle use, Malta fared very average indeed. Just 15 per cent, an additional one per cent, said they used their cars less, 11 per cent said they had reduced their driving speeds, no change from the previous survey, and seven per cent, again no change, had changed their cars to other models that use less fuel.

These starkly contrasting sets of figures demonstrate two of the country’s traits. The first, we will deal with this further along, is that, perhaps for want of a better public transport system, the Maltese are still very much attached to their cars.

The second is that for some reason the vast majority of energy consumers appear to have taken concrete steps to reduce their electricity consumption. And we have a very strong inkling that this about face change in consumption patterns has less to do with the populace having ‘gone green’ and a lot more to do with the steep readjustment of the country’s utility rates.

Now we are by no means saying that the government’s intention in first scrapping the surcharge and then continuously revising utility rates upwards was a green crusade. Far from it, but the rate hike has clearly had an effect on consumption patterns, as we had forecast about two years ago.

Speak to anyone who has taken remedial steps to cut their electricity consumption and they will confirm the savings they have made.

If not purely a side-effect, this was at least part of the reason behind the increased rates - to force people to rationalise their consumption and to have them pay for what they are actually consuming. The government, it can be convincingly argued, had been subsidising a great deal of waste in the first place, waste that could have been done away with if consumers were to be given the right kind of nudge.

That is what is correct, irrespective of how wrongly or otherwise the actual rates were or perhaps still are being calculated. It is a culture shock, and one that the country appears to have been coming to grips with. Yes, the vulnerable need support, but the middle classes and others certainly do not need to be subsidised for what they perhaps overindulgently consume.

A country such as Malta that is 100 per cent dependent on imported oil for its electricity generation simply cannot afford to do otherwise, if it is to release the grip that the international oil markets both directly and indirectly have on its economy.

Now about transport, another area where Malta is facing serious pollution problems. The fact that, according to the survey, so few people have changed driving habits or vehicles is indicative, as said, of a literally unhealthy attachment to their cars. Come July, we have little doubt that the introduction of the new public transport system will have at least a temporary effect on car use.

The new public transport system should go a long way towards that goal. If it is successful, which it most definitely will be at least in the first months due to the novelty factor, it could work wonders for the country’s pollution levels.

Transportation is the country’s second-largest polluter and in the transportation category, public transport is the largest polluter. As such, vehicle emissions are a leading source of air pollution and, in the same vein, a leading source of the deterioration of the country’s air quality.

It will, however, take more than a fleet of far more eco-friendly buses to rid the country of its transport pollution scourge. People will also need to actually take up the service on a permanent basis.

So it’s official. The Maltese are officially the European Union’s biggest energy savers. Let’s hope that, in a little over a year’s time, we will have some similarly good news to report with respect to personal car use.