Four fact-checks on Joseph Muscat’s energy claims as Malta enters the LNG era

Will the new energy improve air quality?

LNG is definitely a cleaner fuel than heavy fuel oil (HFO). The BWSC plant, like Enemalta’s other functional power stations namely Delimara 1 and Delimara 3, were operated on HFO. The BWSC plant is now being converted to gas by its Chinese owners, Shanghai Electric Power. Under the government’s energy plans, Delimara 1 was to close down when the new gas power station comes on stream. The Marsa power station has already been closed down. 

According to Enemalta the conversion to gas is expected to reduce emissions by 50% and particulate matter by 90%. But LNG is less clean than the interconnector which produces emissions in other countries given that it allows Malta to purchase energy generated elsewhere in Europe.

The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) for the new Electrogas plant which was inaugurated on Monday says the shift from heavy fuel oil to LNG will deliver overall positive health impacts for the population, mainly due to the closure of the Marsa power station - something already foreseen when the Malta-Sicily interconnector was approved by the previous administration.

According to the EIA, emission targets for both nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and atmospheric particulate matter (PM2.5) can only be met “under the assumption of extensive use of the ‘clean” electricity from both the interconnector and the gas-fired units at Delimara.”

Additionally, the EIA makes it clear that air quality targets can only be reached if energy demand does not increase over current levels.

Does the new set up make us more dependent on foreign companies?

Malta is already dependent on imported fossil fuels. The gas plant, built by Electrogas, will have a capacity of 200MW and the plan is to replace the interconnector which is owned by the Maltese government, as the primary source of electricity.

In December 2014, then energy minister Konrad Mizzi had said that, for the first year, Enemalta would source 30% of its electricity requirements from the BWSC plant, 50% from the Electrogas power station and 20% from the interconnector with Sicily.

Joseph Muscat met SOCAR president Rovnag Abdullayev in September 2015 in Valletta

In this way the Shangai Electric plant (formerly known as BWSC) will be buying LNG from Electrogas while the operators of the new plant will be selling energy directly to Enemalta’s national grid. In this way 80% of Malta’s energy will be coming from one source.

The agreement with Electrogas commits Malta to buy energy from Electrogas for 18 years, five of which will be covered by a fixed price.  The government has committed itself to eventually replace the Floating Storage Unit, consisting of a massive tanker anchored in Marsaxlokk with a gas pipeline connecting Malta to Europe.   

Azerbaijan state company SOCAR is one of the owners of the new Electrogas plant. SOCAR is responsible for the importation of natural gas to Malta.  Recently the International Board of Directors (BoD) of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) suspended Azerbaijan’s membership in the coalition. EITI promotes the open and accountable management of oil, natural gas and mineral resources with the involvement of governments, companies and civil society organisations.

Was a new power station necessary to close old Delimara and Marsa plants?

Not necessarily especially if energy demand does not increase. A study by economist Gordon Cordina published in 2011 had foreseen that by 2014, when Marsa would have stopped producing energy, the old Delimara power station would have provided less than 1% and the interconnector a staggering 76% of energy demand while 23% would have been supplied by the BWSC plant.

In fact the interconnector was providing 75% of electricity across Malta when it was cut off from the grid following a storm in Sicily, that led to a nationwide blackout in January.  

Marsa which is the most polluting plant was closed down months before the new LNG plant was opened thanks to energy supplied from the interconnector. But this excludes a sudden increase in energy demand. New development projects planned over the next decade may increase energy demand substantially.

However, government insists that the new LNG power plant was pivotal, as Enemalta always seeks to maintain what it refers to as ‘security of supply’ – having enough supply in reserve to cater for any contingency, particularly involving the interconnector shutting down.

Together, the nine development projects being earmarked for Paceville’s transformation into a prime coastal area will consume 40 megawatts of energy – four times that consumed by Malta’s national hospital Mater Dei, 7% of the total amount of energy generated by Enemalta and almost a fifth of the total energy produced by the new power LNG.

Was Delimara a cancer factory?

Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi, Kurt Farrugia and Joseph Muscat were in Baku, Azerbaijan to meet Azerbaijan President Aliyev in December 2014

On Monday speaking on the inauguration of the Electrogas plant the PM described the 25-year-old power station which was switched of as a cancer factory.   

Originally Muscat had insinuated that even the BWSC plant was a cancer factory. Speaking on TV during the 2013 electoral campaign, Muscat said that removing polluting power stations to safeguard the people’s health was reason enough to go ahead with his party’s plan.

He added that he would also invite a child from Marsaxlokk to inaugurate the removal of the Delimara power station’s chimney.

Muscat heard a grandmother of nine talk about relatives who died of cancer and a three-year-old grandchild who is sick with cancer.

“My father died of cancer and eight of my nine grandchildren suffer from asthma. Each day is spent at health centres. And now, our three-year-old grandchild has been diagnosed with cancer,” the woman from Marsaxlokk said. The claim was repeated on Monday during the opening ceremony. 

Four years ago, the claim was immediately shot down by consultant paediatric oncologist Victor Calvagna who pointed out that  “there was no way that one can extrapolate” the findings of his dissertation – which he wrote on the Marsa power station for his Master of Science postgraduate degree in 2005 – to the Delimara plant. Calvagna said the results of his study could not be extrapolated to the Delimara power station because the “primary source of fossil fuel used to fire the turbines at Marsa from 1974 to 1995 was coal and not heavy fuel oil as is used at Delimara”.

Labour had originally promised to shift the BWSC plant to diesel but when elected it extended the use of HFO until the construction of the new LNG plant and the conversion of the BWSC plant to LNG bought from Electrogas.

But a study by air quality experts from the University of the West of England, has confirmed that heavy fuel oil, the residue from crude oil refining that fires the diesel engines provided by BWSC, did not lead to an increase in particulate matter from the Delimara power station turbines.

A study on atmospheric particular matter (PM) 2.5 and 10 - the tiny pieces of solid or liquid matter that are smaller than 2.5 micrometers, such as soot particles, or less than 10 micrometers - found no particular increase in emissions in a pre-2013 and post-2013 study on air quality in the most affected towns of Marsaxlokk and Birzebbugia, which live under the shadow of Delimara power station.

But the new power station has contributed to the closure of the Marsa and older Delimara power station which are less efficient than the BWSC plant which is equipped with desulpherisation equipment.