VILNIUS - Lithuanian leaders announced last week that the Baltic state would seek a 34 percent stake in a proposed nuclear power plant and try to convince Brussels to make a separate power project 's the so-called "power bridge" between Lithuania and Poland 's an EU priority.
On a visit to Estonia on Feb. 14, Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas said that Lithuania would try to secure a 34 percent interest in the new atomic plant that it will build together with Estonia, Latvia and Poland to replace the one in Ignalina, which is set to close in 2009.
The announcement contradicted a report from the previous day, when Kirkilas told reporters in Vilnius that Lithuania would ask for a 50 percent stake. "Lithuania will have the largest share, up to 50 percent," he was quoted as saying on Feb. 13.
In Tallinn, he explained that the Seimas (Lithuania's parliament) would adopt a law mandating the percent ownership in the project, which could cost as much as 4 billion euros.
"Lithuania's Parliament should adopt a bill, which would lay the foundations for the launch of construction. Naturally, the MPs would wish for Lithuania to hold as large a stake as possible," Kirkilas told reporters in Tallinn.
Still, the announcement was the first real indication of precisely how much additional ownership Lithuania would want for having the new nuclear reactors on its territory.
When the Baltic states a year ago first agreed to build a new plant, ownership was divided evenly among the three. Later, in December, when Poland expressed interest in joining the project, the four countries shook hands on equal ownership, or 25 percent stakes for each of the four partners.
However, out of the blue, Lithuanian leaders announced in the beginning of January that they felt the country deserved a larger slice of the pie since the atomic plant would be located in Lithuania. At the time the other three nations expressed consternation at the announcement, particularly Latvia and Estonia.
Kirkilas said in Tallinn that the bill on nuclear power plant ownership would likely be sent to Parliament for a first reading in March.
Estonian officials reacted tepidly to the idea of fixed stakes before the project started. Baltic News Service reported officials from Eesti Eneriga (Estonian Energy) as saying that Lithuania should not set in stone the ownership division by passing a separate law. As Prime Minister Andrus Ansip explained, ascribing stakes by law would make subsequent ownership changes difficult.
The Estonian head of government said he was not against Lithuania having a larger stake. He said that Estonia was more concerned about covering some 25 's 30 percent of its energy needs through the new atomic plant, and not necessarily its equity stake. What's more, he stressed that time was of the essence, that the project should commence as soon as possible and that arguing over ownership structure was a waste of time.
Meanwhile, Lithuania's economy minister, Vytas Navickas, said he would push to make the proposed "power bridge" between Lithuania and Poland 's or grid connection 's a priority project.
"The connecting of isolated energy markets to new energy systems does play an important role, but this is not sufficient for solving the problem of 'energy islands,'" he was quoted as saying before last week's energy summit in Brussels. "Attention should also be paid to the synchronization of electricity systems," he added.
The power bridge is crucial for linking the Baltic states' electricity network with that of Europe's. While the newly launched Estlink has connected Estonia and Finland, this one underwater cable will be insufficient in the long term. If a new atomic power plant is built in Lithuania, it will be imperative to build a connecting grid to deliver the kilowatts to Poland and beyond.
The Brussels energy summit was crucial in establishing goals for the EU's strategic energy security. While the 27 member states failed to agree on establishing a minimal quota of 20 percent of renewables-based energy output by 2020, it did set a 10 percent threshold for biomass use by the same year.
Also, an agreement on separating power production and distribution 's or "unbundling," which is needed to deregulate the market and open it up to competition 's proved elusive, but many felt optimistic that a deal could be reached once the semantic details are hammered out.
"It's an area where we've never had a common policy, and it's not an easy task," EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, a Latvian, was quoted as saying. "We need a policy that is acceptable to everybody from Cyprus to Ireland and that is acceptable to both Germany and Poland, so it's not easy."
