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The EU’s insistence that Lithuania shut down its old nuclear reactor pushed the country back into the arms of Russia

One of the biggest preoccupations for Lithuania since it declared  independence from the Soviet Union in 1990 has been energy – or more specifically, where to get it from.

Before joining the European Union, the country relied upon the Ignalina nuclear plant on the border with Belarus – it supplied 70% of the country’s electricity needs. But the EU said that the ageing plant was unsafe and had to be shut down. Ignalina was finally put out of action in 2009. Since then, Lithuania has had to import 63% of its electricity – almost all of it from Russia.

The EU is aware of the problem. All three Baltic states are ‘energy islands’ – unconnected to the EU power grid. The European Commission wants to change that by 2015, with the aid of funds from the Connecting Europe Facility. But, though it may seem simple to connect Lithuania to the EU grid, as it shares a border with Poland, the reality is that ending Lithuania’s energy dependence is proving enormously difficult.

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Grand plans

The government wants to build a nuclear power plant (to be known as Visaginas) to replace Ignalina. It has also adopted a long-term national energy strategy that outlines how the country will complete four major energy projects – a scheme with Poland called the LitPol link, another with Sweden (called NordBalt), a liquefied natural gas terminal in Klaipeda, and the Visaginas nuclear plant.

But there are doubts about whether any of the projects are feasible. Funding has been slow to materialise, although earlier in the year Litgrid, Lithuania’s transmission system operator, managed to attract $110 million (€83m) of investment for the LitPol link.

Full implementation of the EU’s Third Energy Package could also go a long way towards ending dependence on Russian energy giant Gazprom. But talks with Gazprom on the logistics of this separation have been slow. The reality is that the Lithuanian government’s goal of energy independence by 2020 seems unlikely to be realised.