Different yardsticks

Contrary to what was implied by Minister George Pullicino (September 13) there is no inherent contradiction between my recent media statements regarding David Spiteri Gingell and my articles in the past wherein I referred to him as a highly competent person.

What worries me indeed is when “technical” solutions are found to address pseudo political issues as seems to be the case in this particular instance.

As any layman can tell, there were far too many coincidences in the whole BWSC saga to leave much room for comfort.

Mr Pullicino seems to have conveniently ignored the fact that although Mr Spiteri Gingell served as Enemalta CEO between July 16, 2007 and July 20, 2008 at no time did he question the findings and recommendations of the electricity generation plan for 2006-2015 drawn up by Minister Austin Gatt and Enemalta, wherein it was made clear that the changeover to natural gas could even occur by 2012 at the earliest.

It is common knowledge that in the confidential pre-electoral report drawn up in 2008 by Enemalta when the same Mr Spiteri Gingell was still serving as CEO, the report had an obvious tilt in favour of a shift to natural gas. And that was only two years ago!

While the original draft climate report hardly touched upon carbon credits in detail, in the final report that was drawn up well after the BWSC contract had already been signed in May 2009, Mr Spiteri Gingell argued that it might make more sense to make recourse to carbon credits on the international markets to make good for certain excessive emissions – instead of investing in natural gas at that given point in time.

The government’s claims that the shift to natural gas could not take place after all since the right infrastructure was not yet in place, makes it manifestly clear that when the government drew up the electricity generation plan four years ago, at no time did it take any effective measures to ensure that such infrastructural work got under way. In fact no signs of such work were evident during the period within which Mr Spiteri Gingell served as Enemalta CEO.

For the record, please also refer to a blog comment posted by independent leading environmentalist Edward A. Mallia towards the end of last month, wherein he stated the following: “The Resources Ministry statement that the biggest cut in greenhouse gases from electricity generation would not be obtained from the use of natural gas must be wrong. The Minister has a second climate change report, one not drawn up by his CCC but independently by the UNFCCC group. That certainly concludes that natural gas – where available – offers the best option for greenhouse gas cutbacks. If the Spiteri Gingell report says otherwise, then the Lahmeyer business was not his only gaffe”.

Meanwhile, we still await Minister Pullicino’s confirmation as to whether Mr Spiteri Gingell continues to chair yet another climate committee – the Climate Change Adaptation, which he appointed and which should have concluded its findings way back in April this year but which for reasons still unknown has so far failed to do so.

If all this is tantamount to character assassination then the minister and I must have completely different yardsticks. As his continuous and constant probing, for obvious reasons, of the names of the PL’s unidentified environmental, climate and alternative energy consultants has long implied and suggested.