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October 12, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
Estonia also managed to break its addiction to
gas by exploiting local shale gas rocks. Already in 2007, more than 90% of its power was generated from oil shale. The Estonian energy company Eesti Energia owns the largest oil shale-fuelled power plants in the world, the Narva Power Plants.
BRELLixt
The difference in the energy profiles of the Baltic states has divided their interests and left Lithu- ania in the corner trying to protect its energy sec- tor. Its bet on LNG has not paid off and its renew- able sector has not grown far enough, leaving it currently dependent on imports.
So politicians in Vilnius have been working hard to stymie the Astravets power plant. The first line of attack has been to question the safety of the plant, which is uncomfortably close to the capital.
Ironically, even the EU has signed off on the safety of the Russian-made reactor. The Astravets plant successfully passed EU-designed stress tests peer-reviewed by the European Union Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG), which examined
the facility on the basis of its preparedness for earthquakes, flooding, heat sink, and other severe accidents. IAEA experts have also certified the Astravets plant to be capable of withstanding "the worst credible external event." The VVER-1200 reactor model set for use in Belarus is also being deployed in Finland, Hungary, and Russia.
These reassurances have not placated Vilnius, where politicians insist that they will not allow any Belarusian power onto their grid. The Lithuanian parliament passed a bill in mid-June declaring that the power plant is a threat to national secu- rity and demanded that the government come up with measures to prevent imports.
So far Lithuania has not got Estonia and Latvia on board with its boycott but Poland, which borders Lithuania and Belarus, said in March it would not import electricity from the controversial plant. Lithuania’s preferred solution is to leave the old Soviet power sharing grid completely, but as that
comes with a $1bn price tag Vilnius has struggled to get Tallinn and Riga on board.
The Soviet IPS/UPS power sharing system works under rules that are governed by the so-called BRELL agreement, signed in 2001, before the Baltic countries joined the EU in 2004.
Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia have al- ready made the jump to the EU’s Continental Syn- chronous Area in 1995 and left the Soviet system. After years of debate within the three Baltic states are now moving slowly towards a “BRELLxit” and there is a plan for the Baltics to also make the switch to the European system by 2025.
The future of BRELLixt remains unclear as it comes down to a question of who will pay the $1bn bill. The first stage will be to connect Po- land's grid to complement the one existing Lith- uania-Poland electricity interconnector, the 500 MW LitPol Link.
As the other two Baltic states have already man- aged to greatly improve their energy security they have become a lot more sensitive to the cost of the BRELLixt.
Estonian Minister of Economic Affairs and Infra- structure Kadri Simson has said that delinking the Baltics from BRELL will be so expensive he has questioned the economic viability of the plan. However, on the general principle of reducing the EU’s exposure to possible Russian energy aggres- sion, the EU as a whole still supports the idea. Currently it seems that the EU appears willing to foot much of the bill for delinking.
And delinking could bring some energy savings in the long-term, but not the short-term. Experts say consumers in Latvia and Lithuania could eventually enjoy price reductions of 5-7% in power tariffs, but in the short-term utilities would almost certainly pass the cost of delinking on to customers, which means the cost of power would have to go up at first.
That has to be set against the economics of the