News

On 30 July, the Ministry of Energy and a Strategic Investor of a new nuclear power plant in Lithuania, Hitachi Ltd., signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for joint actions in the preparation for the establishment of an interim Project Company (i-PCO). After signing the MoU, the parties are now considering further steps in the preparatory works for establishing the i-PCO. Once the preparatory works are finished, a proposal for the establishment of the i-PCO will be submitted to the potential investors.

Having considered the progress made during the evaluation period of the project and the agreement of the Lithuanian parliamentary political parties to implement the strategic energy projects, including the Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant Project, as early as possible, in the MoU it is estimated that a detailed plan for the establishment, functions and structure of the i-PCO have to be jointly prepared with a target date of the first half of September 2014. The plan and its implementation process will be presented and discussed further in detail with the representatives of the Regional Partners – Latvia and Estonia – to make decisions regarding the establishment of the i-PCO.

During the last and this year, in order to enhance the competitiveness of the new nuclear power plant project, concrete and positive results were achieved:

• proposals for the improvement of the financing conditions of the project were received from the Strategic Investor with the support of Japanese export credit agencies;
• “Feasibility study on the interconnection variants for the integration of the Baltic States to the EU internal electricity market” has confirmed that the Baltic countries’ synchronization with the Continental Europe Networks is possible and compatible with a new nuclear power plant;
• potential investors (energy companies of Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Strategic Investor – Hitachi Ltd.) presented a Joint position on the economic evaluation of the project and identified the so-called “open questions”. The Lithuanian Government has formulated answers to these open questions which were submitted to the potential investors – energy companies of Estonia and Latvia.

Considering these achievements, the i-PCO will be established in order to ensure the project’s maturity, to improve the competitiveness and the implementation conditions of the project.

Intergovernmental level open questions are dealt with jointly by Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in the Committee of Senior Officials on Energy of the Baltic Council of Ministers.

The text of the mentioned MoU can be found here.