Eco interest discarded

The decision taken by Mepa's board to vote in favour of the "outline development brief" for the extension of the Delimara power station is dangerous because it eases the burden from the government's shoulders and allows it to ignore vital environmental interests.

The government will invest all in a plant that will operate on heavy fuel oil and produce 10,000 tons per year of waste. This will affect not only our country but also other countries to which waste will be transported and deposited. All this goes against the vision of sustainable development in the field of energy.

By this decision, the climate change committee was humiliated and one can say that its existence has become an insignificant one now that the problem will be resolved by an investment in the extension of the Delimara power station, with the generation of an amount of waste per year.

The climate change committee's recommendations to the government and environmental NGOs, such as to invest in the use of gas, were all discarded by the government.

All this is driven by a policy which considers the environment as second class in the development and progress of the country. We believe that to overcome the problem of climate change, we need a change in politics and mentality.