The Electricity Authority’s arguments in favour of a land-based regassification plant for the liquid natural gas terminal seem to have prevailed as all the political parties have finally realized that this is no longer an issue for petty politics but that the nation’s interest is at stake.
On Monday, the House of Representatives passed a crucial amendment to the bill that will pave the way for
The cool-headed approach of Charilaos Stavrakis, the non-partisan EAC chairman, has also paid off, as he managed to keep the tones at a low and civilized level, unlike the harsh language exchanged between the EAC trade unions and the Minister of Commerce.
By general admission, the government has dragged its feet on kick-starting the whole process, losing four years in precious time to appoint the consultant who will now have to rush through plans for the whole project.
The demand for energy is growing exponentially with the main drivers for this need being the construction boom and the rise in the number of new residential and holiday homes in the past decade, while investments in increased capacity from the new units at the EAC’s primary plant at Vassiliko have been implemented albeit at a slower pace, thinking wrongly, that the LNG plant would be up and running by 2009.
If we miss the deadlines set forth by the European Union energy watchdogs, then taxpayers in Cyprus will probably pay an unnecessary fine, the reasons behind which are deemed “irrelevant†in the present pre-election fever.
As no one will ever be blamed for this mess, the state should at least speed up other ways to help reduce the pressure from the overburdened EAC power grid. This includes further incentives for consumers and companies to save on their power consumption, stricter legislation that will impose environmentally safer resources and the speeding up of alternative power suppliers using ‘green’ sources of energy, such as solar, wind and LNG.
The mistakes and incompetence of the present-day politicians will be inherited by their grandchildren and the next generation that will also have to foot the bill for a reformed Social Insurance Fund in order to ensure that they get a pension some four decades from now.
