Malta doubled oil imports between 1996 and 2007, when the country’s energy consumption and demand for transport fuel soared.

While energy consumption in the EU rose by an average of 0.4 per cent annually during the period, Malta’s increased its demand tenfold to about four per cent per year, according to data published yesterday in Brussels in a new report on EU Cohesion Funds.

The countries with similar scenarios were Spain and Ireland but Malta saw the largest increase among all 27 EU member states.

Oil imports went up from 984,000 tons in 1999 to 1,800,000 tons by 2007. When calculated per capita, while in 1999 every Maltese resident used 2.6 tons of oil every year, by 2007 this grew to 4.58 tons a year.

“These figures clearly demonstrate Malta’s tremendous economic development over the decade,” an EU official said yesterday. “However, on the negative side, it also shows Malta’s total dependency on fossil fuels and this has to be tackled,” he noted. Malta is the only EU member state that is still exclusively dependent on oil for its electricity. Being an island is also a drawback because, so far, the country cannot import electricity directly from other EU member states, though plans are in hand to connect with the European energy grid through a submarine cable to Sicily.

At the same time, the government is also hoping to install three wind farms, two onshore and an offshore one, in order to meet the EU’s benchmark of having 10 per cent of the country’s energy needs coming from renewable sources by 2020.

Meanwhile, the EU yesterday unveiled a new common energy strategy for 2020, which lays emphasis on energy efficiency and the modernisation and reinforcement of the EU’s infrastructure.

According to Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, €1 trillion need to be invested in the sector by 2020 for pipelines, storage, thermal insulation and wind and solar technologies.

Mr Oettinger did not mince words: “Europe is not ready to meet the approaching challenges. The energy sector is not competitive enough, the technology is getting old, there is still not enough infrastructure.”