Most countries are doing the opposite. Skaiste told a conference entitled Making Green Finance a Reality in the Baltics in Vilnius, that we had the aim of increasing excise duties on fossil fuels, but now we are taking steps backwards because energy prices are very high.
She said that we are under pressure to do the same, but we won't do it.
The price of gasoline in Lithuania crossed the two-euro per-liter mark this week.
The tax on fossil fuels and promoting renewable energy sources in Lithuania could be done as well, but now is not the right time because of the soaring inflation, according to Skaiste.
One of the ways we can still make is tax policy but it would be a difficult way to do when the inflation rate in Lithuania is one of the highest in the European Union, she said.
The green economy is now a priority in Lithuania, but earlier it was more important for the country to achieve energy independence from Russia, which used resources as a tool of pressure, according to Skaiste.
In the past, we used to pay Gazprom more gas than other countries, so we knew that Russia was using the resource as a weapon to pressure countries to make the decisions it needed, the minister said.
She said that now we have the freedom to buy energy from anywhere, but at the same time prices on international markets have gone up.