Properly managed, the Baltic states in particular will come out of this energy crisis as winners. Green energy is the very obvious answer for them, even more than for other countries. Cheap and reliable.
They have all that's required to be self sufficient and even exporters in terms of energy:
- little heavy industry
- very low population density in rural areas
- mostly centralised heating networks in urban areas
- plenty of cheap biomass, mostly for use in winter
- a fairly decent bit of sun, mostly for use in summer
- plenty of hydro power [0]
- fairly good hvdc interconnects
- plenty of cheap EU cofinancing
- a population largely ready to stick it to the godfather in Moscow
These are the pros but you forgot to outline the cons. One of the big issues with green energy in the Baltics is the lack of grid capacity. You can have solar panels fitted but unless the grid has enough throughput for you to be able to actually sell it back it's not worth much. These days the costs to upgrade the local grid are prohibitively expensive so it's not going to happen unless the government does it.
I'd expect a somewhat half capable government to take care of that using 85% EU co-financing like what happens for about all crucial infrastructure in the Baltics.
I only know about the situation in Latvia in detail. There, installing small scale solar really is quite lucrative. You can use the amount of excess electricity produced in summer in winter, paying only the very low standard network infrastructure fee on top. Plus subsidies: up to 4k€ for your solar install, up to 4k€ for buying an electric car, and up to 4k€ for a heat pump install.
I don't know the answer to your question for certain, but let me make an educated guess:
- Some electricity production in Latvia is natural gas based cogeneration, meaning it needs to run for inhabitants to have hot water.
- At Pļaviņas hydro station [0], the biggest in the Baltics with 894 MW, water levels were lowered from July 11 until August 20 for maintenance work. Production might not have resumed yet.
- Latvia has an extremely large natural gas storage facility at Inčukalns [0]. This might have something to do with it.
By the way, press 5 years on that historical graph and hydro is accounted for most generated electricity. Moreover, if you scroll knob to left to view more historical values. At 8 AM 26%+ came from hydro, but now 1,97%...
They have all that's required to be self sufficient and even exporters in terms of energy:
- little heavy industry
- very low population density in rural areas
- mostly centralised heating networks in urban areas
- plenty of cheap biomass, mostly for use in winter
- a fairly decent bit of sun, mostly for use in summer
- plenty of hydro power [0]
- fairly good hvdc interconnects
- plenty of cheap EU cofinancing
- a population largely ready to stick it to the godfather in Moscow
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Latv...