In a country such as this with no natural resources and as completely reliant on imported fossil fuels for its energy generation as it is, the generation of electricity is bound to be a cumbersome and hotly debated issue. Here in Malta there is the added factor that a significant proportion of our tap water is produced through reverse osmosis, a process that is heavily energy intensive.

Being completely dependent on imported energy comes at a cost, especially when the country has very little, by way of comparison with many of its EU neighbours, in terms of renewable, cheap energy.

And that cost, in political terms, is very high indeed.  When one looks back over the last few years, the energy sector has been riddled with corruption and maladministration claims.  From the procurement process of the current BWSC, heavy fuel oil powered Delimara power station to the oil procurement scandal, and more recently the smart meters racket, the issue has never been far from the headlines.

The oil procurement scandal coupled with the Labour Party’s energy plans were in fact jointly one of the main factors that spelt out the Nationalist Party’s severe defeat at last year’s general election polls. And the Prime Minister has even staked his political future on the issue, having vowed to resign should the new and improved, gas-fuelled power station for Delimara not be up and running as scheduled.

After the Malta Environment and Planning Authority this week published results of an independent study that found emissions from the Delimara smokestack had not risen through use of heavy fuel oil – confirming the former government’s claims that the BWSC emission abatement technology was robust enough to keep emissions down, many are now rethinking the Labour Party’s pre-election claims that the installation was actually a ‘cancer and asthma factory’.

This newspaper had also heavily criticised the use of heavy fuel oil at Delimara since the idea was first floated, but now that the results of the emissions study have been released, this newspaper is ready to eat its fair portion of humble pie.  The government, however, despite its scaremongering, clearly has no intention of doing so.

Many in the areas surrounding the Delimara power station are now instead beginning to focus on what appears to be a clearer and more present danger in their own backyards – that of a floating LNG supply unit, earmarked for a spot inside Marsaxlokk Bay next to the facility.

Back to the cancer and asthma factory claims.  Many had swallowed those claims hook, line and sinker despite the Nationalist Party’s arguments to the contrary, which, it seems, were correct after all.  That is because, aside from this week’s report confirming that emissions had not risen with the switchover to heavy fuel oil, the new government, despite all the scaremongering, did not do anything to address what, if its claims were true, is a very serious issue indeed. 

The new government had even pledged to change the use of the contentious heavy fuel oil at Delimara as from day one of taking power. That clearly did not happen and more than that, when the IPPC permit for the BWSC plant recently came up for renewal, it was the new government that actually called for an extension of the permit in its current form.

Considering all the pre-election talk of cancer and asthma factories, this approach makes almost as little sense and the Prime Minister’s reply to reporters this week.  When asked if he was ready to retract his comments about cancer and asthma in the wake of the emissions report, he simply answered that the former government had changed emission limits so as to accommodate the BWSC installation.  That may be true but this still does not explain away the fact that emissions had not shot through the roof with the use of heavy fuel oil.

After all that had been said and done, it was simply unfathomable how the government could even have contemplated continuing to run the Delimara power station on heavy fuel oil, when the Labour Party had opposed its introduction so vehemently when in opposition.  That includes the Prime Minister and the energy minister, who had described the fuel as the most polluting on earth.

But over and above that, what is also confounding is how during the election campaign the party had pledged to convert the power station to run on the less polluting diesel if and as soon as it was elected, a fact which the government is now attempting to negate.

But what, in actual fact, is being negated is the government’s electoral pledge.  The government had clearly gone back on a promise that it later tried to pretend it had never made. But the fact of the matter was that the party’s energy plan was the cornerstone of its election campaign, and that pledge to change the power station’s fuel source had garnered the party many votes in last March’s general election.

Still, it has not done anything to address the situation, short of saying that the new power station would be far cleaner, being run on natural gas. 

But well over and above all this is the fact that none other than the Prime Minister himself who had blasted HFO-fuelled power station as a ‘cancer and asthma factory’. It is inexplicable how the government could even consider keeping what it has termed a “cancer and asthma factory” open for one day longer than necessary after all the HFO scaremongering during the election campaign.

More than that, as stated, the government even extended the cancer and asthma factory’s lifespan when it extended the permit.

These actions speak volumes.

After the Malta Environment and Planning Authority granted the government’s request to extend the use of HFO in Delimara until March, no doubt another similar request will be made for the use of HFO until the new gas-fired plant is up and running.

Where does this leave the residents of the south of the island who were scared out of their wits by the Labour Party’s cancer and asthma hazard claims?

These are just some of the fundamental questions that are begging to be answered.  More still are being raised now over the government’s apparent insistence on placing the floating storage unit right smack in the middle of the Marsaxlokk Bay.  This is an issue that will not go away, not for a long time, and whether this is merely the latest chapter in the power station scaremongering saga remains to be seen.