Ross Hendin, CFP Contributor and Principal of Hendin Consultants brings us another addition of CFP’s ongoing case study on the Ignalina nuclear power plant. Here, Ross analyzes key players looking to capitalize on the closing of Ignalina, their respective opportunities and the political risks that threaten energy autonomy to Ignlina’s homeland: 

To bridge the gap between when Ignalina will close and when a new plant will be built, the countries are exploring a number of other options to bring in energy. One option is a cable that would send energy from Sweden to the area (exact place where the energy would arrive has yet to be determined).

This is important to the Ignalina story and the fate of the Baltics because Sweden is prepared to have this pipeline run under its part of the Baltic Sea, but is not prepared to host the Nord Stream pipeline running on its continental shelf to supply Germany with Russian gas. Somewhat ironically, in Sweden’s attempt to supply power to the Baltics, they may be helping to further isolate the area by setting a precedent for pipelines to run under the Baltic Sea.

There is a similar pipeline project, South Stream, that is designed to pipe gas directly from Russia to Bulgaria under the Black Sea. As this article in the New York Times highlights, the campaign to start this project began this week in Brussels, and was met with some initial resistance.

Some feel that much as the Nord Stream pipeline will eliminate the need for Russia to supply the Baltics and other gas transit states with energy that has to reach the western European countries, so too will the South Stream project circumvent the Ukraine and make sure that situations like what happened last winter don’t impact the western European markets again.

This means while Lithuania and the other Baltic states are trying to change their status from “energy island“, they are actually helping to keep themselves in that position. Assuming the Russians did want to use their energy to dictate foreign policy, they would not only be able to shut off the proposed Rostam nuclear plant in Belarus, which may very well be the first and most likely source of energy for the area, but they would also be able to turn off the gas supplies to the Baltic states as well. The Baltics and Ukraine would be going from having an independent supply of electricity and a (relatively) secure source of gas, to having both electricity and gas supplied by a country that has used the supply of both to dictate foreign policy - only now, they would be able to turn off both sources with little collateral damage.

To the Baltics, this is a political risk that is looking more and more likely by the day.

Ross Hendin is a CFP Contributor and Principal of Hendin Consultants, and is a Senior Advisor to the Canadian office of a leading multi-national PR firm. With strategic communication experience in more than 20 countries around the world, Ross specializes in complex and high-stakes communication and marketing strategies in a number of industries, including energy. Hendin Consultants is in Toronto and London, UK, and is on the web at www.hendinconsultants.com. Email Ross at ross@hendinconsultants.com.