2013: The year of air

The European Commission has designated 2013 as The Year of Air. Sixty five per cent of Maltese respondents to a recently-published Eurobarometer survey on air quality consider that over the last 10 years there has been deterioration in air quality over the Maltese islands.

Hot air is not an option- Alan Pulis

About a third of these respondents believe that air pollution challenges are best addressed at local and national levels.

Forty-five per cent of those who answered agree that the most effective way to tackle air-related problems is to provide more information to the public about the health and environmental consequences of air pollution.

Only 14 per cent of respondents believe that the best way forward would be to increase taxation on air polluting activities compared to 17 per cent from the EU27.

More significant is the outcome that 33 per cent of respondents believe that air pollution from energy production should be tackled as a priority compared to 59 per cent who emphasise the issue of transport emissions.

The Eurobarometer survey comes at a time when the energy sector is high on the national agenda in the midst of electoral campaign debate. Political parties have been escalating the energy issue for months and despite this Government’s controversial decision to opt for a heavy fuel oil fired power station extension at Delimara there seems to be consensus about the need for Malta to go for natural gas.

The question is no longer about “if”. It is now a matter of by when and how this should be done and, clearly, judicious decisions must be taken on solid and sustainable economic grounds.

In a nutshell, natural gas firing has two fundamental advantages. Firstly, the conversion to natural gas firing should entail more efficient and, therefore, cheaper energy production.

The overall performance of Malta’s power generation system would increase in terms of both the generation of power with minimal fuel use and the release of greenhouse gas emissions.

Secondly, gas is the cleanest fossil fuel with the least sulphur emissions and, hence, should a new gas fired plant be installed at Delimara to replace the old Phase I steam plant there would be no need for landscape-marring 150-metre stacks to disperse emissions safely as far away as possible from residential areas. A flue gas denitrification plant has just been installed at Delimara within the BWSC project, which means that the control of nitrogen oxides would not really be an issue – as long as, clearly, the abatement technology is kept in good shape operation-wise.

Modern state-of-the-art gas firing does away with harmful levels of particulate emissions. For how long will we keep on having smoke signals from Marsa?

The Eurobarometer survey highlights that the Maltese are aware that air quality and human health go together and the public wants to know more about the implications. Above all, the public wants more concrete action from the competent authorities, not least at government policy level, to ensure that the quality of the air we breathe is safeguarded as sensibly as possible. The economic dimension of air quality is yet another priority – respiratory disease is costly to tackle.

And, after all, the days of polluting the atmosphere for free are counted and unless Malta acts quickly to adopt efficient systems of energy production there is the nasty economic burden of heavy pollution costs that lies ahead, which we simply cannot afford.

The European Commission has expressed its intent to decarbonise Europe by mid-century. The overarching aim under the EU Energy Road Map 2050 is to achieve drastic 80-95 per cent greenhouse gas emissions cuts over the next 40 years across the EU27. This will be achieved by shifting Europe’s energy mix to low carbon, reducing dependency on heavy fuel oil and opting for gas instead and, clearly, revamping Europe’s renewable energy market. Clean air is Europe’s priority and the net beneficiaries will be Europeans.

Why should Malta lag behind and procrastinate with dirty, heavy fuel when the benchmarks are so clear?

Malta’s power generation issue is also about the urgent need to modernise Enemalta’s infrastructure with the maxim that there can be no real security of supply without flexibility of supply. The scenario whereby the fragile Maltese economy would be entirely dependent on a fixed interconnector with Sicily for good and for worse and without any ‘Plan B’ is, to say the least, strategically questionable.

The ‘Plan B’ must provide Malta with the option to fuel its conventional power generation systems from elsewhere. The answer could indeed lie with a new natural gas firing technological regime at Delimara.

The survey figures suggest that we also seem concerned with transport emissions. Reform or not, the number of cars on our roads remains on the increase and overall transport emissions may have actually worsened in recent times.

When the dust over power generation eventually settles, policymakers will then face a perhaps even more daunting task to decide, seriously, what has to be done to keep Malta’s transport emissions under check.

This is the year of air; hot air is not an option.

sapulis@gmail.com

Alan Pulis specialises in environmental management.