Labour has recently declared that the way it plans to reduce energy bills is by having a sound energy policy using gas as a hydrocarbon combustible! This declaration is stunning if anything for no other reason than for its simplicity. I mean, how could the government have been so daft as to raise energy bills using present hydrocarbon fuels such as heavy fuel oil, when the gas alternative was there all the time? Heavy fuel oil is also more polluting than gas, so Labour’s deduction is simple: vote PL for cheaper energy bills.

It transpires that the government is also interested in changing the present Delimara power station to gas. Only the government has its feet realistically on the ground now, and Labour has its head in the clouds tomorrow. The government wants to ensure that when we do have a power station working on gas, and the present power station can be converted accordingly, there is a constant supply of gas available. The only thing that can maintain this constant supply is a gas pipeline between us and the mainland. Transport by ships is not reliable. This gas pipeline will cost millions to build and the EU seems to be ready to help us fork out the cash with this through a financial protocol from the EU structural funds that will be allocated from 2014, as the present structural funds’ protocol ends in 2013.

So what the government is proposing is to wait for the next stage of EU structural funds, and in the meantime fund the powering of energy with the cheapest possible but environmentally safest fuel go-between that is available at present, which is the heavy fuel oil option. Let me be clear, it is only the clean-air technology currently installed at the new power station that makes the use of heavy fuel oil possible, as it is potentially quite a substantial pollutant.

Labour would have us believe that they will close the Delimara power station the day after elected and change it to gas, thereby immediately reducing our the energy bill! The reality is different. They have to wait until the EU makes its structural funding available in 2014, apply for the funding, hoping that we remain eligible for EU funding to the same extent that we are today (sector 1), wait for approval, issue tenders, build the pipeline and convert the power station to gas. Events that could take five years – probably more – to accomplish!

There is also one big unknown in this equation: what will the price of gas be in five or six years’ time? Labour’s solution is therefore an if/but synthesis, what one may call “pie in the sky”. There is also the question to which I referred in another article, which is whether one should increase subsidies or spending on hydrocarbon fuels or use these spending/subsidies on alternative energy sources.

An intelligent politician I once knew abroad, told me to beware of easy solutions to complex problems. There are none. If the problem is complex, the chances are that the solutions are also complex. There are ways of providing simple explanations of proposed solutions, but anyone who comes up with a ‘simple’ solution to problems such as energy policy, employment, housing, drugs, crime, inflation or a myriad of other complex subjects, clearly does not even understand the problem, let alone the solution! I still cherish this advice.

The provision of energy in a modern economy is a very complex problem. Labour’s solution is too simplistic and simply clouds the truth and misleads voters. Unfortunately, its whole campaign is in such a ‘simplistic’ mode and after our experiences of Labour’s VAT/CET debacle in the past, voters should be more wary and demand much clearer insights and answers from our politicians. The PN’s proposals on these matters are much more concrete and realistic – choosing to build on solid ground instead of just ‘gas’!