The report of the setting up of yet another climate change committee (August 12) contained a number of bizarre statements connected with the Delimara power station (DPS) extension. The chairman, defending the decision to go for a so-called "fuel-oil" extension, was reported as saying that no supply of (natural) gas is currently available. Put that way, the defence is bogus on two counts. First of all, a set of eight piston engines was preferred over a so-called closed cycle "gas" turbine of the type we have had working at DPS since 1998 burning diesel. So had we chosen the "gas" turbine, the fuel would have been available diesel and not unavailable natural gas.
But having chosen the piston engines brings in a second, unmentioned aspect of the "defence" and incidentally also of the PL "attack". The piston engines do not have to burn "dirty" HFO; they could just as well burn much cleaner diesel. The use of HFO was an Enemalta decision, based on the price difference between HFO and diesel.
This was reckoned to be sufficiently large to cover the cost of cleaning up the HFO emissions (€12 million pa) and the eventual switch of fuel - and not of technology - for the piston engines to natural gas: €27 million.
A "gas" turbine burning diesel requires minimal expense to change to burning natural gas, but turbines or piston engines burning diesel will not lead to the holy grail of reduced electricity charges. Between HFO and diesel there is only a small difference in favour of diesel in CO2 emissions.
In any case the piston engines, with an efficiency of 46-48 per cent, offer a considerable gain on the Marsa boilers working at about 26 per cent efficiency. What these figures mean is that for the same amount of electricity, DPS will emit about half the CO2 that Marsa is currently emitting, both stations using HFO.
On supplies of natural gas, Minister Austin Gatt categorically said during a January 2009 parliamentary sitting that we will have a pipeline supply from Gela. The sudden fright we have had on learning of the cost of the Sicily interconnector may be of some relevance here. Will our limited demand for gas justify the capital expense?
Compressed gas is an unwieldy commodity which does not seem to feature much on the gas market. There is apparently one suitable vessel shuttling compressed gas from Burma to India.
As for liquid natural gas, which has to be kept at a temperature of -112°C, we have no storage capacity. So we would have to install that, of a size that would permit a reasonable rate of tanker docking; but we would also need re-gasification equipment, as turbines and piston engines burn gas in vapour not liquid form.