Energy, Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Lithuania, Nuclear power plant

After quietude of more than a half a year, Lithuania held last week in Vilnius a meeting of the three Baltic States energy companies and technology supplier Hitachi.

After the meeting, Eesti Energia nuclear projects manager Andres Tropp was more pessimistic than ever. "Eesti Energia got confirmation to the fact that the Lithuanian nuclear power plant project is at the moment not economically sustainable," he commented.

Tropp add that Lithuania made a proposal to partners to look into ways to improve the competitiveness of the project, which he said is a very complicated task since the main problems are connected the bad investment climate of the European energy sector as a whole, and are not specific to the Lithuanian project.

"The development of the European Union energy sector regulations has by now resulted in a situation where investment to production facilities that are not receiving state subsides is not economically sustainable," he said.

Tropp said that Eesti Energia will make a number of proposals in the near future to the economy ministry to develop the Baltic energy market. "The solutions will have to be found by state governments," he said.