ESO must answer whether it properly maintained the network, planned investments, mobilized brigades, and communicated with people. However, narrowing the problem down to one company is strategically wrong, although politically convenient. The state cannot transfer the resilience of critical infrastructure to an operator and then pretend to be merely a demanding customer of its services after a disaster.
The storm revealed not only weak power lines. It revealed the state’s weak management of climate risks.
Compensation is not climate policy
After the storm, Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius promised strategic decisions for electricity supply security. Minister of Energy Lukas Savickas took on compensation for residents. Minister of Agriculture Kęstutis Mažeika proposed declaring a state-level emergency to seek European support and protect affected farms.
This help is essential for people. In some cases, it may even be proportionate (although for most, a few hundred euros will likely not restore the incurred losses). However, it is politically important to state: compensation is not a policy for adapting to climate change, and declaring an emergency is not a preparedness strategy.
The government is currently choosing the most expensive model of situation management – paying for the consequences instead of investing in their prevention.
Risk management begins with its assessment, reduction, and preparedness, not with compensation after an event. If, after every storm, the government declares it exceptional, promises payouts, and then returns to old priorities, we will not be managing climate risk, but institutionalizing perpetual unpreparedness.
One ministry fixes wires, another increases speed
The government’s inconsistency is particularly clearly demonstrated by the decisions proposed just before the storm.
While Europe seeks ways to reduce transport sector emissions, dependence on fossil fuels, and create safer mobility, Lithuania’s Minister of Transport Juras Taminskas proposed allowing speeds of 140 km/h on some highways. At the same time, the mandatory safe distance when overtaking a cyclist is proposed to be turned into merely a recommendation.
No, this is not a minor detail of the Road Traffic Rules unrelated to the storm. Rather, it is an illustration of the same government’s priorities.
One day the government promises to strengthen the state’s resilience, the next it dedicates political energy to faster car traffic and weaker protection for the most vulnerable road users. On one hand, the costs caused by climate extremes are calculated, on the other, decisions are made that are incompatible with the need to reduce emissions and dependence on cars. Where is the logic? Or perhaps it’s a simple catch-all – an attempt to please as many voters as possible at once, without even evaluating whether individual decisions align with each other and with the government’s own declared goals?
Adaptation to climate change does not negate the duty to reduce its scale. The more we allow the climate to change, the more expensive, complex, and ultimately less effective adaptation itself will become.
Therefore, climate policy cannot be merely a drawer in the Ministry of Environment. It must become a mandatory criterion for energy, transport, agriculture, health, social policy, and national security. The Ministry of Environment should be a political coordinator here, not a silent observer of extreme phenomena, as we see currently.
The state still plans according to yesterday’s climate
One could argue about a single hot day or a single storm. However, we have long been talking not about isolated weather records, but about a clear and long-term climate trend.
This summer, a natural heatwave was recorded in Lithuania. In some parts of Southern Lithuania, it lasted five days. During it, a new all-June temperature record for Lithuania was reached, and tropical nights, when the temperature does not drop below 20 degrees, were recorded at 31 out of 54 meteorological stations.
This is not just this year’s anomaly. From 1961 to 2022, the average annual air temperature in Lithuania rose by 2.3 degrees. The number of hot days, when the temperature reaches at least 30 degrees, has increased more than threefold. Until 1990, tropical nights were a rarity in Lithuania, but since the last decade of the last century, their number has consistently increased.
An even clearer picture can be seen on a European scale. Western Europe has experienced four heatwaves since May. Four, Karl! The combined average temperature for June and July in the region was the highest in recorded history – exceeding the 1991–2020 average by as much as 2.79 degrees. An international group of scientists determined that the intensity of the heat that plagued Europe this June would have been practically impossible five decades ago without the impact of human-induced climate change.
This is not a series of coincidences. As temperatures rise, heatwaves become more frequent, longer, and more intense. A warmer atmosphere can accumulate more moisture, thus increasing the risk of very heavy rainfall and floods. Droughts are lengthening, the danger of forest fires is increasing, and pressure on agriculture, energy, and human health is intensifying.
From a scientific perspective, the link between all extremes and climate change is not equally clear. For example, assessing the wind strength of this specific weekend’s storm would require a separate attribution study.
However, this distinction cannot become an excuse for inaction. State risk management is not a court process where one undeniable cause for every disaster must be proven before strengthening infrastructure.
The task of policy is to act according to known probability and the scale of potential damage. Therefore, electricity grids, communication systems, roads, cities, and farms can no longer be planned based solely on last century’s weather statistics. What might have been considered a very rare exception in the past is no longer a reliable basis for deciding what we will face in the coming decades.
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Non-adaptation is also a political choice
Adaptation is often presented as an expensive line item in state expenditures. However, the real choice is not between investing and saving. The choice is between investing before a disaster and paying significantly more after it.
According to the European Environment Agency, weather and climate extremes in the EU caused approximately 822 billion euros in economic losses between 1980 and 2024. More than 208 billion euros, or a quarter of the total, was incurred in just the last four years of this period.
And this is mostly just direct damage to property, infrastructure, and crops. These figures do not include the full cost of deteriorated health, lost working hours, halted businesses, and disrupted public services.
In Lithuania, less than 3 percent of such losses are privately insured. This means that after every disaster, the bill remains for people, businesses, and the state budget.
When ministers talk only about compensation, they are essentially choosing this expensive scheme: society pays after a disaster because the government did not invest enough before it.
Furthermore, as temperatures rise, adaptation itself becomes more expensive. It is estimated that if global temperatures rise from 1.5 to 2 degrees, the necessary investments could double, and if they reach 3 degrees, they could increase approximately fourfold. Thus, delay is not saving, but a conscious transfer of a larger bill to future taxpayers.
Resilience cannot become a luxury good
Gaps in state climate policy are not just budget lines. They directly increase social inequality.
A higher-income person can buy a generator, a power storage unit, an air conditioner, insure their home, or leave for a few days. A lower-income person is left with a non-functioning water pump, spoiling food, and a dead phone.
Heat most affects seniors, people with chronic diseases, children, and outdoor workers. Long power outages most severely impact residents of remote areas. Equipment not working for several days can ruin a small farm that does not have a generator, storage unit, or adequate insurance.
When the state leaves resilience to each person’s wallet, it creates two Lithuanias: one that can buy security, and another that pays for the state’s unpreparedness with health, income, and lost security. Resilience to the climate crisis must be a public good, not a privilege for those who can afford it.
What is needed from the Government now?
First, the Government must present a public action plan for the resilience of critical infrastructure to climate risks. Not another document of general aspirations, but a list of priorities: which electricity grids, communication systems, medical facilities, water sources, and transport links are most vulnerable, who is responsible for strengthening them, how much it will cost, and by when it will be done.
In energy, this means risk-based cabling of the most vulnerable lines, selective removal of trees and branches posing a real danger to lines (by no means a blind justification for felling), sufficient repair capacities, decentralized renewable energy, storage units, local microgrids, and reliable backup power for vital services.
Second, adaptation must appear in the 2027 state budget as a genuinely funded program. Cities need heat management plans, shade, greenery, and permeable surfaces. Farms need support for water retention, soil improvement, crop diversity, insurance, and backup energy supply. Farmers do not need new compensation after every downpour, drought, or storm. They need state partnership that would reduce damage even before the next extreme event.
Third, every significant government decision must pass a climate and resilience test: does it reduce emissions and societal vulnerability, or does it create additional risk, the cost of which people will later bear?
Such a test should be applied not only to energy infrastructure. It must also withstand proposals to drive at 140 km/h, and decisions regarding cyclist safety, urban development, land reclamation, healthcare, and state investments.
The new Government could not fix infrastructure problems accumulated over decades in a few weeks. However, it could have clearly identified the changed climate risk. It did not. It could have shown how it would change its priorities. So far, it has not. It could have set specific adaptation works, funding, and deadlines. It has not done that yet.
I am not criticizing because all Lithuanian power lines are not yet hidden underground. I am criticizing because even after such a state resilience exam, the Government still talks about consequences but avoids naming the real task.
We do not adapt to the climate crisis when the electricity is already out and losses are being calculated. We adapt before the storm – or we all pay significantly more after it.
