A big question in the Baltic plan to boycott the electricity of Astrava Business

This is also confirmed by Lithuanian Energy Minister Žygimantas Vaičiūnas, who admits that there are only a few months left to agree on guarantees of origin for electricity.

“The system that would guarantee the absence of Belarusian electricity is technically complicated enough, so this is a key issue at the moment,” the minister told reporters at Seimas on Wednesday. “There is consensus on all the other issues, and I can admit there is no solution.”

On Wednesday, he and other energy sector leaders participated in a meeting of the Seimas Energy and Sustainable Development Commission, where they presented the progress of the negotiations with Latvia and Estonia.

These negotiations gave Latvia a breath of fresh air a couple of weeks ago after announcing that it had also decided not to commercialize Belarusian electricity following the commissioning of the Astrava nuclear power plant.

However, negotiations remain difficult and there is little time to reach an agreement: the power plant will start producing electricity in late autumn, says the minister.

“Since it has been publicly said that electricity production at the Astravo nuclear power plant is scheduled to start in November, this is an indicative guideline for when we will have to agree on all these technical details,” Ž.Vaičiūnas said.

According to him, the Baltic countries should also contribute to score points in the negotiations on an additional tariff for imported Russian electricity, in order to reduce their purchases in the region, but there is broad agreement on this issue.

A new controversy matures

However, there is disagreement not only about the guarantee of origin system itself, but also about when it should take effect.

It turns out that the Lithuanian version differs from the Latvian and Estonian.

Politicians raised additional questions during a closed session of the Seimas Commission when it became clear that although the Baltic states had agreed on the transmission of electricity in the region, Lithuania and its neighbors see a different date for the entry into force of this decision. .

The capacity agreement stipulates that the Lithuanian-Belarusian commercial section will not be used since the launch of Astrava. The three Baltic countries have recently submitted this agreement to their local energy market regulators.

“95 percent. Those methodologies overlap, but it turns out that the Lithuanian version differs from those of Latvia and Estonia,” Virgilijus Poderys, chairman of the Seimas Energy and Sustainable Development Commission, told reporters.

“The Latvian and Estonian versions are that the bandwidth methodology is agreed, (…) but the Lithuanian version also stipulates that the bandwidth methodology comes into force when the system of guarantees of origin is also agreed”, stated the politician.

This is also recognized by the Minister of Energy.

“Those methodologies are basically the same, there is only one nuance, namely in terms of the period of entry into force. We associate this with the operation of a reliable and efficient guarantee system, ”said Ž.Vaičiūnas.

Are the obligations of the neighbors fragile?

Why this is so, Lithuanian politicians can only guess.

“If our neighbors are not in a hurry with that system of certificates or other guarantees, it means that they are not thinking too much about whether there may be Belarusian energy in the Russian energy mix that reaches Latvia,” said V. Poderys.

On the other hand, the politician says that Latvians and Estonians can simply understand that negotiations on guarantees of origin will not end until Astravas is released.

“There is a long way to go to reach an agreement on such a certificate system, because the agreement between Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius is only a small part of the work. The aim is to reach an agreement with the central actor of that system, the operator of the Russian system, and this requires the benevolent and proactive participation of Russia, ”said the parliamentarian.

“Theoretically it is possible to develop a certificate system for the first day of December, but in practice it is very difficult. It would be a great feat if someone succeeded,” he added.

Is it possible to separate the flows?

One of the fiercest opponents of the Astrava nuclear power plant calls for the flow of electricity from Belarus to Lithuania to be stopped.

In the current version of the Baltic Electricity Bandwidth Agreement, the bandwidth of Lithuania and Belarus is reduced by 38 percent, which explains that the remaining electricity must flow in a ring between the BRELL countries (includes the Baltic States, Belarus and Russia) due to the reliability of the system.

This methodology is unnecessary for us and violates the interests of Lithuania.

However, conservatives are not convinced of this and say that the so-called “technical flow of electricity” will be commercialized once it enters Latvia from Belarus.

The politicians of this party are teaching another scenario: that Latvia can use existing bandwidth to buy electricity from Belarus, which would be delivered in Russian.

Therefore, any methodology is bad until Latvians make it clear that only electricity from third countries flowing directly from Russia to the state will be sold, said Dainius Kreivys, a representative of this party, after the Seimas commission meeting.

“There must be a very simple point in the methodology that Latvians only trade the Russian electricity that flows through their cross sections,” the politician told reporters.

“If you have passed electricity from third countries through Lithuania, do not exchange this electricity. Now it is not in the methodology, which means that all this methodology is unnecessary for us and violates the interests of Lithuania, because it does not provide fuses that impede the flow of electricity from Astravas, “he added.

“Russia will gladly help Belarusians to establish their Russian origins so that Latvians can trade in” Russian “electricity. And this is not a conspiracy theory, these are real facts,” said D. Kreivys.

At this point, I can only sympathize with the Minister.

Allegations that the “technical flow of electricity” reaching Lithuania through Belarus can be traded in Riga are rejected by both the operator of the country’s electricity transmission system, Litgrid, and the Minister of Energy.

“I don’t understand why society is being deliberately misled,” said Ž. Vačiūnas.

Meanwhile, Seimas Commission Chairman V. Poderys admits that the Baltic States may not be able to fully implement the decision on the Astravas boycott until Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have completely disconnected from the BRELL ring and connected. its electrical systems with Western Europe.

However, when asked whether Lithuania should soften its position in this regard, the MP states that this issue is “very politically toxic”.

“There are probably physical and infrastructure limitations that no negotiator can overcome. (…) I can only sympathize with the Minister in this place, because the position of Latvians and Estonians is not that acute in some places, it feels like that,” he said. the politician.

“On the other hand, when there are certain infrastructure limitations for the very clean and very complete implementation of some provisions,” he said.