Enemalta should stop trying to teach grandmothers to suck eggs. We all know that from the point of view of CO2 emissions there is little to be gained by using gasoil rather than heavy fuel oil (HFO). The objections to HFO were based on the emissions of other things such as SO2 fine particulates and metals like vanadium, nickel and lead and the residual sludge now due to be burnt in existing Delimara boilers – not an experience the boilers are going to like.

Enemalta also assumes we have a very short memory. So it has taken to reminding us of the increased efficiency of Delimara Extension, but only insofar as comparing CO2 emissions from Marsa and Delimara Extension are concerned. It has chosen to forget that the increased efficiency is also reflected in decreased fuel costs. And if, as is the case, the efficiency gain (a factor of 2) is greater than the price differential between HFO and gasoil (a factor of 1.6), gasoil at the Extension is going to cost less than HFO was costing at Marsa to generate the same amount of electricity. So the report presented by Enemalta at the Mepa public hearing on the IPPC permit, which asserted that if gasoil was used instead of HFO during the testing period of the extension, there would have to be an increase of 10 per cent on the present rates (based exclusively on HFO use at Marsa), was completely mistaken. Not only that but also fraudulent, for the brief given to the compiler of the report involved an engineering impossibility: that the piston engines were to be operated for 24 hours a day for 240 days.

But the final mistake was made by the writer of the KPMG report, who simply and erroneously compared gasoil and HFO costs at Delimara Extension for working out the effects on present rates, by a supreme irony determined by KPMG with reference to HFO use at Marsa. 

Not that Enemalta has made much progress since last December. Promises of emissions monitoring, supposed to have started as soon as the test period of the Extension, have remained dead, even though the Extension chimneys have been seen to emit black smoke ‘occasionally’. It is not yet clear if the tender for the emissions monitoring has even been issued.

As for the Enemalta debt being “offset by interconnector rates and by increased efficiency” is based on one side by pie in the Italian sky, given that Italian rates are not low and in any case Minister Fenech has no idea what they are going to be like, and, on the other, by a hope that has been shown as hopelessly inadequate for tackling the debt. After all, did not Minister Fenech himself suggest a few short weeks ago that Enemalta debt needs a re-financing operation?

E.A. Mallia

ATTARD