Labour and the politics of power

Labour MEP Edward Scicluna has been quoted by The Times as estimating the cost of last Tuesday's power failure to run between €8 and €10 million.

It's all very easy to calculate the losses of Tuesday's power failure. When 50 million people in the eastern United States and Canada were left without electricity for long hours in August 2003, economists pulled out their calculators. So they did when Italy had a big power failure in September 2003 which left most Italians without electricity for as long as 18 hours. The calculators were on again in November 2006 when large parts of France, Belgium, Holland, Italy and Germany were left without electricity after power stations tripped in Switzerland.

But Prof. Scicluna is not just an economist, he is now a politician. Last Tuesday's power failure shows how important the government's strategy is to diversify our energy sources on three fronts: wind farms, extending the Delimara power station, and the undersea electricity cable to Sicily. What was Labour's response to this government energy diversification strategy while Prof. Scicluna was campaigning for MEP?

His party's position on windfarms will be decided after a public perception survey, Leo Brincat told televiewers on PBS. Prof. Scicluna's party came out in full force against the chosen bidder for the extension of the Delimara power station, defending the Israeli company that was the losing bidder. The government is getting €25 million from the EU for the undersea cable to Sicily - this was supposed to be just €1.5 million in total according to Prof. Scicluna's party. His party is, as usual, now fomenting local discontent telling Baħrija residents that Wied Rini was chosen as a possible site for an onshore windfarm as Baħrija residents are mostly Labour supporters!

Rather than play with calculations, Prof. Scicluna should rather play the politician he has now become and tell us what his party's solutions regarding energy actually are.