On April 26th European Business Network in cooperation with Estonian Chamber of Commerce held a Networking Event where Romas Švedas, an independent expert who has been in the energy business for over 20 years presented his outlook on the energy policy of the Baltics.
According to R. Švedas, the main challenge in the field of energy of the Baltics is the dependency on single external supplier – Russia, and this problem can be solved by creating a regional energy market, which should be the main objective of the region.
In his vision of Lithuania in 2020 R. Švedas sees Lithuania importing half of its energy from several suppliers, another quarter would come from nuclear energy and the remainder would be made in renewables. “Diversification of sources is the main idea”, said R. Švedas.
The goal is not to build the nuclear plant, but to reduce dependency from the single supplier, so that Lithuania would not have to face similar situations as in 1990 blockade, closing the “Druzba” connection or manipulations with “Achema”.
The regional energy market would integrate the national markets; create alternatives of supply, availability of choice and competition. In the long run the national markets would transform into regional and later into one pan-European market.
Even though today there are no connections between some countries R. Švedas calls this “a chicken – egg situation”. When we will have the connections, there will be a single market and vice versa – when we will have single market – we will have connections.
In the end of his presentation R. Švedas admitted, that he is not in favor of the referendum for the building of Lithuanian power plant: “Politicians want to avoid the responsibility, so they hide behind the people”.
EBN reporter Edgaras Savickas