‘We are being proven right, across the board’ | Mark Anthony Sammut

The Nationalist Party has been given a lot to be triumphant about, of late. Finance Minister Clyde Caruana has admitted that his government’s economic model is ‘flawed’ - prompting a ‘We told you so!’ response from the PN – and just yesterday, the Energy Ministry has just announced plans for a ‘new offshore windfarm’… of the kind that former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi had suggested, way back in 2006. Do you feel, then, that your party is being proven right on all those sectors (including energy, which is what arguably lost it both the 2008 and 2013 elections)?

I think that we’re being proven right, across the board: starting with the economic model, which is something we’ve been talking about for the past 10 years. In one of the most densely-populated countries in the world, it was madness to base our economic growth on simply increasing the workforce, by expanding the population. This has resulted in precarity; cheap labour; increased cost of living; inflationary pressure on property and rental prices; not to mention the impact on the environment, and the country’s infrastructure.

And the energy sector fits in with all that. When we talk about the rising cost of living, we tend to blame it on things like the international energy crisis, and the war in Ukraine. Now: these certainly have an effect, no doubt about it. But when you compare Malta with other European countries, [a different picture emerges].

The government likes to boast, for instance, that we have the ‘lowest inflation rate in the EU’. In July/August, our inflation was around ‘7.something’ per cent; while the EU average was around ‘9.something’. But that’s not a like-with-like comparison; because while the Maltese government was subsidising local energy-prices… there were no such subsidies in other EU countries. So the major component of inflation, in those other countries, was energy.  In Malta, however, energy is NOT a component, because it’s being subsidised.

The real figure we should be looking at, then, is the one Finance Minister Clyde Caruana himself mentioned in his presentation two weeks ago: that if there were no energy subsidies, our inflation would be higher than 20%.

And this means that – once the energy crisis starts subsiding - the rest of Europe will see its inflation rates start to go down. Malta, on the other hand, will not. Because the major component of inflation, over here, is not energy: it’s the economic model chosen by the government.

It’s the same with renewable energy, by the way. In 2006, there was a plan for an offshore windfarm: and there were already nine consortia lining up to invest in it. So it was feasible: financially, at least…

Really? I’m not so sure; but carry on…

… all I was going to say is that, when Labour came into power in 2013: they scrapped the offshore windfarm plan completely, because they wanted Electrogas. And in 2015, they actually removed it from the Renewable Energy Plan altogether. They stated, in black-on-white, that wind would NOT be a component, of Malta’s policy to reach its renewable energy targets, by 2050. And in the same year, they bought a windfarm in Montenegro…

… and now, 10 years later, we’re going back to where we started, with offshore windfarms: like we stated in our long-term energy plan, last year. Had we done this 10 years ago, on the other hand: by now, we would have a 100-megawatt windfarm, supplying roughly 20% of our energy capacity; and saving us a packet of money [balla flus] that is now being spent on subsidies; not to mention all the ‘green jobs’ that would have been created…

This is what I had those earlier doubts about, though. You’re talking about the PN’s 2006 offshore windfarm idea as though it was guaranteed to work. Yet in the seven years between 2006 and 2013, the Nationalist government never managed to implement it; and as I recall, the main reason was that the ‘deep-sea’ technology favoured at the time, had yet to be properly tested…

If I remember correctly, the main concern was about the [Yelkouan] shearwater, and the effect it would have on local breeding colonies. But I don’t remember the precise details. Even so, however, there were mitigation measures that could have been taken; and the technology has evolved a lot since then…

OK, but what I meant was: it’s very easy for the Nationalist Party to tell Labour: ‘I told you so’, when it comes to renewable energy. But for all the time it spent in government, the PN never actually implemented a single large-scale renewable project of its own. All it ever did was introduce a few fiscal incentives for photovoltaic panels. So how can it be taken seriously, in this sector?

I wouldn’t say ‘nothing was done’: the offshore windfarm plans were moving forward. By 2010, the impact assessment report had been submitted; and many of the pre-implementation stages were ready. So had we won the 2013 election, that windfarm would already be in place by now. And even many of the [energy projects] inaugurated by Labour, had their origins before 2013. The interconnector, for instance…

But that’s not exactly a ‘renewable source of energy’, is it? On that subject, however: the war in Ukraine has also exposed just how dangerous it can be, to rely on a European grid that is largely dependent on gas supplied by potentially hostile countries. (Germany, for instance, has had to scuttle its own ‘interconnector’ with Russia). Isn’t it unwise, then, to bank so heavily on a pipeline to mainland Europe, for gas?

Well, you have to look at the situation as it stands today. Right now, for our importation of gas we depend exclusively on the agreement we have with SOCAR. I would say that a pipeline to Europe ensures a better security of supply; because there’s a whole gas market to choose from…

… it hasn’t worked very well for the rest of Europe, though, has it?

Europe is looking for alternative supplies to Russian gas at the moment, yes. But that only illustrates why we have to diversify our energy sector. Our long-term goal should really be to increase our sources of renewable supplies: even because we need to reach our European targets by 2050. From this perspective, the windfarm is an absolute necessity. This is why, in my first-ever speech in parliament, around seven months ago, I appealed to government to amend our National Energy Policy: which, to this day, still rules out wind energy altogether, on the grounds that it is ‘unviable’.

But we have to look at other possibilities as well: the uptake of solar panels, for instance. We still have some potential has not yet been tapped into. To give an example: using roof-space of industrial parks, for solar panels. As it stands today: to install a panel in a government industrial park, you have to pay rental fees; put down a security guarantee… and most people conclude that it’s simply not worth their while. So at least, government could incentivise that, to make it easier for them.

Above all, however, I think we should be adopting a more scientific, evidence-based approach: in all areas, really; but to energy in particular… because it is, after all, a science-based sector.

I take it this is something you feel the government is NOT doing, right now?

No; and it makes it difficult for anyone else to take a scientific approach, too. Because most of the information and data, concerning the energy sector, is currently being kept hidden. And the little that is available is not even trustworthy: not even when it is data that is mandated by EU directives.

Let me give you one example. According to EU directives, Enemalta should annually publish the fuel-mix composition of the energy distributed over the previous year: i.e., how much of it came from LNG; how much from renewables, etc. Until last week, however, the only data available was for 2019.

So I asked a parliamentary question about the fuel-mix composition for 2020 and 2021. First of all, [Minister Miriam Dalli] said that the values are only published in the last quarter of the year: which means that it takes them 10 whole months to calculate them.  She also told me that the 2020 values had already been published online: making it seem as though I hadn’t noticed them. But actually, they were uploaded last week…

To cut a long story short, however: when I looked at the figures for 2020, I saw that they also contained the comparative data for 2019 – which had been in the public domain for two years – but… the values for 2019 were different, in the two versions. Two years ago, they told us that 56% of energy imported through the interconnector, in 2019, had come from LNG. Last week, however they told us that the percentage for 2019 was actually 72%...

Bear in mind that these figures are what the ‘CO2 emissions factor’ is based on, that is included in your electricity bill: i.e., how much carbon dioxide is generated, by each electrical unit that we consume.

Now: the CO2 factor that is on your bills today, was calculated on the basis of the ‘56%’ of three years ago. But that value has now gone up, from 380 to 404. So… what’s happening? How can we have an energy policy that is driven by science, and evidence-based research… when you can’t even trust the official data, provided by Enemalta?

On a separate note: I can’t help but observe that – while you yourself consistently talk about a ‘scientific, evidenced-approach in all areas’ – the same cannot really be said for the Nationalist Party as a whole. Leaving aside that certain statements made by Bernard Grech recently – such as his call for the dead foetus to be legally represented, in the Andrea Prudente case – were not just ‘unscientific’, but absurd… it remains a fact that the PN still struggles to be taken seriously as a viable Opposition (to the extent that even now – after it has been ‘proven right’, on so many issues – it couldn’t muster more than a few thousand of its Old Guard, for a public protest). How do you account for that, yourself?

I think the biggest stumbling block we need to overcome, at this stage, is that the negative results we have obtained in the past, have reinforced the public perception that ‘we don’t stand a chance of ever being in government’. So people out there might not be interested in what we have to say, because they reason to themselves that: ‘Whatever they say, they’re still going to remain in Opposition’.

That is the perception we have to beat. And the moment we do that – the moment we show that we CAN, in fact, be a party in government government – I think people will be more attuned to what we are saying; and many of them will realise that what we’ve been saying all along was, in fact, true.

Even in corruption, for instance. We’ve been talking about corruption for so long, that people have become immune to it; and government has also managed to instil this idea that ‘both parties are equally corrupt’ – which only desensitizes people even further to this topic...

But by your reasoning, the question becomes: ‘How does the PN intend to overcome this perception, that it is destined to remain in opposition forever?’ Surely, the answer cannot be by ‘retaining the same leader, who has already been roundly defeated in an election anyway’. Wouldn’t you say, then, that the PN itself also needs to transform, in order to change those public perceptions?

First of all, the party is not just made up of its leader. So the defeat at the last election cannot be solely attributed to Bernard Grech… as though ‘changing the leader’ were some kind of ‘magical solution’ to all the party’s problems.

But I think that certain steps were taken, since the last election. Over the summer, we re-organised most of our structures, to be more ready to mobilise where necessary. And we started off with a series of actions: the class-action on electricity bills; a judicial protest against the oncology contract awarded to Technoline; and just today, we asked for another investigation into the Marsa fly-over scandal…

So as a party, I think we have begun to send out a clear message that the Opposition is there; and is doing its work. We still have our shortcomings, naturally; but I think we’ve learnt a lot from them; and we’ve certainly been punished a lot for them, too.

But we never had ‘the most corrupt Prime Minister in history’, either; and we certainly cannot be blamed, because a criminal gang took over in 2013, and simply pillaged everything in sight...