Muscat's procedural complaint has two parts. The first — 'without knowing how they reached the calculations' — is contradicted by Dalli's actual rebuttal. The second — 'without publishing her own' — has some narrow merit but isn't the headline he claimed.

What Dalli actually said in response

Dalli's rebuttal to PN's morning press conference identified four specific numerical objections, each tied to a specific PN claim. From her own statement:

• Objection 1 — €30M solar savings figure: Dalli stated that PN's claim of €30M in annual savings from new solar generation 'barely reaches half' the figure when run through her own calculations.
• Objection 2 — the 5%/95% framing: PN claimed that 5% renewable generation could address 95% of demand cost. Dalli's response was direct: 'the numbers do not add up'. Mathematically, 5% of generation cannot directly address 95% of cost without specific marginal-pricing assumptions PN didn't disclose.
• Objection 3 — 2-year payback: PN claimed €60M one-off solar investment would generate €30M/year savings — implying a 2-year payback. Dalli pointed to the standard ~7-year payback for solar PV with all government grants applied. The 2-year claim contradicts widely-known economics.
• Objection 4 — €10/month savings ≠ 30% reduction: Even accepting PN's working, the implied savings of ~€10/month per household don't equate to the 30% reduction PN claimed.

This is line-item engagement with specific PN numbers — not blind dismissal.

So 'without knowing how they reached the calculations' is wrong

To make the four objections above, Dalli necessarily knew what PN's claimed inputs and outputs were. The objections are about specific arithmetic and methodological errors — not about a generic 'I disagree'. Muscat's framing that Dalli responded 'without knowing how PN got there' is contradicted by the substance of her response.

What may have caused Muscat's framing: PN's morning press conference materials weren't released in a fully self-contained methodology document. So while Dalli could identify outputs that didn't reconcile, the underlying assumptions PN used to generate them weren't fully published. That can be characterised either as 'opaque PN methodology' or 'Dalli not knowing' — Muscat chose the framing that put PN in a better light.

On 'without publishing her own calculations'

This narrower part has some merit. Dalli's rebuttal pointed to existing official data sources (NSO Electricity Supply 2024, EWA renewable-share data, Enemalta annual reporting) and identified specific PN errors against those sources, but did not produce a single comprehensive side-by-side counter-document with her own bottom-up working.

A fuller policy-quality response would have included Dalli's own line-by-line reconciliation: 'PN says X, on these assumptions; we say Y, on these assumptions; here is where we differ.' That document didn't appear. So if Muscat's narrow point is 'a published reconciliation document was missing', that's fair. But the broader claim 'she dismissed PN without engaging' is not.

What's the standard for both sides

Maltese energy-policy debate routinely runs on each side citing different selections of the underlying data. Both PN and the government would be more credible if they published full methodology annexes alongside their public claims. PN's morning publication should have done so. Dalli's response should have produced a side-by-side reconciliation. Neither did fully — but on the question of who engaged more substantively with the other's specific numbers, Dalli's response was clearly more line-item engaged than Muscat's framing implies.

So is the claim accurate?

The headline framing — Dalli dismissed PN's calculations without knowing how they were reached — is contradicted by the substance of Dalli's actual response. The narrower complaint that she didn't publish a single comprehensive counter-document has some merit but isn't what the claim says.

Verdict: Misleading.