In the budget presented last Monday, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech boasted that “next year will see the start of the project for the extension of the power station at Delimara, using present day technology. It will, in a few years’ time, replace the old Marsa plant that has been a source of pollution. Instead of allowing the emissions to come out of the chimneys we will capture the toxic waste and export it in a safe manner to landfills licensed to store such material outside our country.” Minister Fenech gave us no indication of how much getting rid of this toxic waste is going to cost us. All we know so far is that, according to the Adjudicating Committee awarding the tender, the diesel engine combined cycle (DECC) plant offered by the Danish company BWSC will generate “between 30 and 50 tons per day of hazardous waste… by the exhaust emission abatement equipment. The waste is considered hazardous due to the presence of heavy metals originating from the fuel. The waste is similar in nature to the waste produced by the existing Heavy Fuel Oil fired boilers.”
The board goes on to say that: “This waste most probably will have to be exported although its use as a bulking out additive in mass concrete is being investigated. All this would require a continuously operating logistics system to handle these materials.”
How much is the handling, transport and disposal of this toxic waste amounting to at least 11,315 tonnes a year going to cost? So far this answer has not been made public. It is important that we know as the costs of getting rid of thousands of tons of this toxic waste are going to find their way into our water and electricity bills. All the Finance Minister told us last Monday was that this toxic waste is going to be sent to landfills in other countries. Where are these landfills? How much are they going to charge us for taking our toxic waste?
I know of local firms that have asked companies in Italy and Germany that are paid to get rid of such toxic waste by using it at factories producing cement or by depositing it at landfills. Cement factories charge between €50 and €100 a tonne for this toxic waste. This would mean that every year we will have to pay between half a million euro and a million euro to these factories to help us get rid of this toxic waste. But that does not include the cost of handling and transporting this toxic waste, so it will be much higher. But last Monday, Minister Fenech did not mention any cement factories ready to take our waste and said that this toxic waste will be exported to special landfills. Such landfills usually charge up to €1,000 a tonne to take this toxic waste and this amount does not cover handling and transport costs. If the information given to me is correct it will cost us more than €11,315,000 every year to export this toxic waste to landfills in other countries. This would be sheer madness and I hope that government and Enemalta will come out and say that we do not have to carry such a heavy financial burden and that getting rid of our toxic waste does not cost a lot.
So far we have not been told by Enemalta or the government how much it is going to cost us to export this toxic waste. Do Enemalta and government know? They should tell us if they do know. According to the report prepared by the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Finance for the Parliamentary Public Accounts Board earlier on this year the costs to export such toxic waste are known and “have been included in the financial analysis” leading to the decision to award the bid to BWSC. But is this true? At what stage of the tendering process where these costs taken into consideration? The Technical Evaluation Report prepared by Enemalta states that the “logistics for procurement, handling and disposal of these (toxic wastes) … are beyond the scope of this contract.”
Were these costs included or not in the financial considerations leading to award the tender to BWSC? And if these costs were not included, how did government and Enemalta decide that the unit cost of electricity produced by the heavy fuel oil fired plant offered by BWSC is cheaper than that produced by the plant offered by Bateman? The report prepared by the Enemalta technical team evaluating the bids concluded that the “Combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant (offered by Bateman) does not require such reagents (to control emissions) and produces minimal amounts of waste.”
Government and Enemalta have been trying hard to justify awarding the contract to BWSC’s plant using heavy fuel oil because it is cheap. But it does not lead to cheaper water and electricity bills once you factor in the costs of the handling of toxicity, environmental impacts and plant maintenance costs. While the price of heavy fuel oil may appear to be cheap compared to other fuels there are hidden costs that actually reduce the economic advantages of heavy fuel oil.
In fact three years ago government and Enemalta published the national plan for the generation of electricity announcing that the new plants at Delimara would be combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT) like the one offered by Bateman and not diesel engine combined cycle (DECC) powered by heavy fuel oil as offered by BWSC. They said CCGT plants are cheaper, healthier and friendlier to the environment. But when they came to choose the new plant they discarded the CCGT bid and opted for the plant running on heavy fuel oil.
To make matters worse for us, all indications are that the price of oil is set to rise in the years ahead while the price of gas is going to go down. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has just published a report showing that global gas markets have evolved from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market and there is a glut of supply that will drive down the price of gas in the years to come, delinking the price of gas to the price of oil.
Six years ago the PN government failed to act on building a pipeline from Sicily to supply natural gas to Malta. In 2003 it was much more affordable than now and in the years to come. Government also failed to take any initiative to persuade North African countries to reroute their pipelines to Europe through Malta. These steps would have given us a constant flow of natural gas that would result in lower water and electricity bills and a healthier environment. Now we all have to pay dearly for the government’s incompetence.
Evarist Bartolo is a Labour MP and spokesperson for education
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Minister Fenech gave us no indication of how much getting rid of this toxic waste is going to cost us. All we know so far is that, according to the Adjudicating Committee awarding the tender, the diesel engine combined cycle (DECC) plant offered by the Danish company BWSC will generate “between 30 and 50 tons per day of hazardous waste… by the exhaust emission abatement equipment. The waste is considered hazardous due to the presence of heavy metals originating from the fuel. The waste is similar in nature to the waste produced by the existing Heavy Fuel Oil fired boilers.”
