Executing the agreement decided at the Cabinet of Ministers on 25 August 2020 and reached at the meeting of senior energy policy officials of the Baltic Council of Ministers on 31 August 2020, in accordance with the instructions of the Ministry of Economics, as well as on the basis of Article 13.1 of the Electricity Market Law, on 4 September 2020 JSC Augstsprieguma tīkls (hereinafter AST) submitted to the Public Utilities Commission for consideration the Terms, Conditions and Methodology on Cross-Zonal Capacity Calculation, Provision and Allocation with Russia (hereinafter - the Methodology), jointly developed by the Baltic Transmission System Operators - AST, Elering AS and Litgrid AB. 

The submitted Methodology includes the following main changes compared to the currently valid Methodology for calculation and allocation of Transmission Capacity with third countries:

• The methodology will enter into force once it has been agreed by the regulatory authorities of all three Baltic States and the Belarusian nuclear power plant will be operational.
• When the Methodology enters into force, capacity for trade will be allocated on the Latvian-Russian border. No capacity will be allocated on the Belarus-Lithuania and Estonia-Russia as cross-zonal capacity between bidding zones.
• The Belarus-Lithuania interconnection capacity will not be used for the transmission of trade flows. This is done by reducing the capacity to be allocated to trade with Russia by a factor of 0.62. The multiplier of 0.62 reflects the ratio of the Lithuanian-Belarusian cross-border maximum cross-sectional capacity (hereinafter - TTC) in relation to the amount of TTC at the borders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia with third countries (except Kaliningrad area).

The methodology will also be submitted to the Estonian and Lithuanian regulatory authorities for review. The Lithuanian transmission system operator will submit the Methodology to the Lithuanian regulatory authority with one additional condition that the Methodology can enter into force only after the introduction of a common system of guarantees of origin for electricity to ensure that no commercial electricity supplies from Belarus enter the Baltics.

Documents: Terms, Conditions and Methodology on Cross-Zonal Capacity Calculation, Provision and Allocation with Russia