Renewable Energy Production Covers 13% of Consumption

In the third quarter of this year, production of renewable energy accounted for 13% of Estonian electricity consumption, meaning that the share of consumption supplied by renewable sources has risen by five percentage points in a year. A total of 208 GWh of renewable energy was produced in Estonia in the third quarter, which is more than half as much again as a year ago.

In the third quarter, 67% of renewable electricity came from waste and biomass, 31% from wind energy and 2% from hydroenergy. In the same period last year, renewable energy covered 8% of consumption and for the year as a whole it passed the 10% level.

Taavi Veskimägi, the CEO of Elering explained that we can see from today’s numbers that we are already very close to our goal of increasing the proportion of electricity produced from renewable sources to 15-20% by 2020, and if we use the adjusted figures for renewable energy from Statistics Estonia and Eurostat, Estonia is within reach of the overall target of 25%. “In this context the ministry’s desire to alter the renewable energy subsidy system is very logical, and given the increase in the income of producers as the market opens it is also very fair. The increased amount of money that producers will get from the open market compared to fixed prices is the same as what they will give back to consumers through lowered subsidies for renewable energy”, he said. Veskimägi added that the review of the renewable energy subsidy is a current topic of debate across Europe and for example the government of the UK recently unveiled plans to reduce gradually the subsidies paid to renewable energy producers. “The reason for this is worries about the competitiveness of the economy and the rapid rise in electricity bills,” he said.

Applications for the renewable energy subsidy totalled 10.9 million euros in the third quarter, which is almost twice as much as a year ago. The main factor behind this is the applications from biomass-fuelled power stations and wind plants. The producers who applied for the largest amounts of subsidy in the third quarter included the Pärnu CHP plant and the Narva power plants, which produce electricity from biomass. Payments were also increased when the Vanaküla wind park passed the quality assessment tests in the Grid Code during the third quarter.

Applications for the subsidy for efficient combined heat and power production were 18% down on the third quarter of last year at 0.6 million euros. The amount of subsidised CHP electricity produced fell from 24 GWh to around 20 GWh, mostly because CHP stations were using wood chips as their main fuel source and were consequently able to apply for the renewable energy subsidy. In the same period of last year those power stations also used peat when applying for the subsidy for efficient CHP production.

Production of electricity from hydroenergy rose to 4 GWh from 3 GWh in the third quarter a year ago.