“The reality is that the Marsa power station is getting old,” Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said this week, when he made this startling discovery last Monday evening in a pathetic attempt to explain the power cut these islands suffered in the afternoon and most of the evening. He also said that the government was working on solving the problem through the extension of the Delimara station, planned for next year, and installation of the submarine cable linking Malta to Sicily in 2012.
For the last 20 years the PN government has been repeating over and over again the same refrain: “The Marsa power station is getting old.” In fact after inaugurating the Delimara Power Station, the PN government promised to close down the Marsa Power Station.
The PN has had practically 23 years of uninterrupted office, more than enough time to prepare and implement a national energy strategy. The Marsa Power Station has not aged overnight and unexpectedly. The Marsa turbines are 47 years old, the age of its boilers ranges from 23 to 41 years. Even the Delimara Power Station is already half way through its lifetime and needs to be replaced in the coming decade.
Yet after 23 years in office the PN government has left Malta dependent on the Marsa Power Station for at least a quarter of its energy needs. The PN government cannot feign surprise that our country has already started running out of electricity. However hard it tries to find scapegoats for this failure, sometimes even accusing some of its workers of sabotage, it has been the PN government’s incompetence and lack of vision that has landed us in the mess we are in now.
In the last two years we have not had more power cuts and black outs simply because of a slowing down in manufacturing, tourism and construction and so the demand for energy also slowed down. An Enemalta Dossier dated 6 March 2008 makes this very clear: “this project (extending the Delimara Power Station) is already ‘late’ and power cuts will start in the summer from 2009 onwards … The 100MW Generation plant must be in service during 2010. Delays in this time line will result in Enemalta’s inability to meet demand during the peak season.”
The PN government has allowed our electricity generating plants to become the most inefficient in Europe: the operating efficiency of the Marsa Power Station is 27%; the steam plant at Delimara operates at 32% and its gas turbines at 40%. Government has known for at least seven years that with this kind of plant and given the growing demand for electricity, Enemalta was being put into an impossible situation where it “will only just meet the expected demand in 2010, with no reserve capacity. In fact if the rate of increase in peak load during the period 2008-2010 is abnormally high or if there are major outages of generating plant the Corporation… may face problems as early as 2009.”
The Monday power cut is another proof that these problems have already started. They have not been worse in 2009 and perhaps will not become much worse in 2010 because of the economic downturn in tourism and manufacturing and in the property and construction sector.
Government has been aware of the need for more electricity to meet the demands of new projects like Mater Dei, consuming 12MW more than St Luke’s Hospital, MIDI needing 14MW by 2012. Pender Place is estimated to need 8MW by 2012, and Smart City will need 30MW by 2015, if it takes off as promised.
Enemalta had estimated three years ago that by 2015 we will need to generate 531MW of electricity. At the moment we have only 551MW at most but by 2012 the Marsa Power Station (267MW) has to be closed down as beyond that date (and probably before) it will probably be in breach of the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive and we would have to pay penalties to continue to operate it.
Government knew about these increasing demands and yet dragged its feet and allowed crucial years to be wasted. No wonder that Enemalta’s 6th March 2008 Dossier states that the main weaknesses in Malta’s energy sector include the “Lack of sufficient investment in generation and distribution over the last few years. New plant investment, both in generation and distribution is already too late. Distribution infrastructure is aging.”
Lots of our hard-earned money has been wasted on operating an old generation and distribution plant. Extending the Delimara Power Station with a plant operating on heavy fuel oil is more of the same: expensive, producing thousands of tons of solid and liquid hazardous waste and threatening our environment and public health. The new BWSC plant will also deprive us of the land we need for further expansion at Delimara in the coming years.
Four years ago the PN government declared that it was turning over a new leaf by opting for plant power by natural resources as this would be cheaper, cleaner and use the Delimara site efficiently as there was enough area to install three new plants. Even when it comes to energy the PN government has put the interest of a few before the common good. It has allowed a few individuals and companies to use their connections to make lots of money while thousands of families and business have to struggle to pay their energy bills.
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