Busuttil pledges to buy energy from cheapest supplier, despite government Electrogas commitment

Leader of the Opposition Simon Busuttil has pledged that a Nationalist Party government will purchase energy from the cheapest supplier, in spite of the Labour administration entering into an agreement which binds the government to buy energy from the Electrogas for a period of 18 years.

Dr Busuttil was addressing a political activity yesterday morning in Attard, where he discussed the PN’s energy proposals.

He pledged that a PN government would reduce the price of petrol and diesel by five cents, and that throughout the PN’s legislature, prices would be kept below the EU average.

Dr Busuttil remarked that the government had been stealing from the public over the past four years, because while the international price of oil had plummeted, this reduction was not passed down to consumers.

The removal of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tanker would be a PN government’s priority, together with works on a gas pipeline between Malta and Sicily. Dr Busuttil said that the previous PN government had already planned for this pipeline but time, he added, had been wasted by the Labour government and no progress had been made in this regard.

He pledged that Malta would deliver on its EU 2020 goal to have 10 per cent of energy production come from alternative sources, such as using available technology to generate solar power from roads.

A study would be commissioned and a call for expression would be issued in order to ascertain the best available technology for this pledge.

He said a PN government would achieve the EU 2020 climate goals and that commercial entities would be given fiscal incentives in the form of tax credit to turn the roofs of their properties into green areas.

A PN government would also introduce a concept known as ‘solar rights’, making eligible for compensation those who have invested in solar panels, but who have subsequently lost access to sunlight as a result of neighbouring development.

Research shows interconnector electricity exponentially cheaper

Research published by this newspaper earlier this year shows that purchasing electricity from the Malta-Sicily interconnector is exponentially cheaper than purchasing it from the Electrogas power station.

An independent analysis commissioned by the Nationalist Party and seen by this newspaper, the study estimates the additional costs the country would have incurred in 2015 and 2016 had the country’s energy requirements been met by the new Electrogas power plant instead of the interconnector. According to the study, if the Electrogas power station had been operational in 2015 — as was originally stipulated in the 2013 Labour Party electoral manifesto — it would have cost the country an additional €138 million over the past two years.

Moreover, the expert analysis also calls into question the need for a new power station in the first place, given that energy production data for 2016 shows that the interconnector is capable of meeting three-quarters of the country’s energy needs and that the BWSC plant would have been more than enough to cater for the remainder of the country’s energy requirements.