We introduce a new numerical method for the time-dependent Maxwell equations on unstructured meshes in two space dimensions. This relies on the introduction of a new mesh, which is the barycentric-dual cellular complex of the starting simplicial mesh, and on approximating two unknown fields with integral quantities on geometric entities of the two dual complexes. A careful choice of basis functions yields cheaply invertible block diagonal system matrices for the discrete time-stepping scheme. The main novelty of the present contribution lies in incorporating arbitrary polynomial degree in the approximating functional spaces, defined through a new reference cell. The presented method, albeit a kind of Discontinuous Galerkin approach, requires neither the introduction of user-tuned penalty parameters for the tangential jump of the fields, nor numerical dissipation to achieve stability. In fact an exact electromagnetic energy conservation law for the semi discrete scheme is proved and it is shown on several numerical tests that the resulting algorithm provides spurious-free solutions with the expected order of convergence. (C) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.