On March 5, the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy hosted a speaker event on this subject organized by Professor Andres Kasekamp, Chair of Estonia Studies at the University of Toronto.
The guest speaker, Ms. Yoko Alender, is currently Estonia’s Minister of Climate. The Ministry of Climate of Estonia has a broad scope of policy responsibilities including those pertaining to climate action, transport, energy, mineral resources, fisheries and environmental impacts.
In introducing Minister Alender, Professor Kasekamp provided an overview of the Minister’s academic background and her career as an architect and urban planner, politician and now as Minister since July, 2024. He mentioned that the Minister and her Estonian delegation are currently attending the renowned Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Mining Conference in Toronto.
Minister Alender commenced her presentation with an overview of the Ministry of Climate’s scope and responsibilities. Unlike a more traditional “Ministry of Environment” the Estonian Ministry of Climate was established in 2023 to have a broader and more integrated policy umbrella for the various private and public sectors that have an impact on climate and on sustainability in the broader sense.
Notwithstanding the turbulent geopolitical context, the EU is still committed to a more sustainable and self-reliant energy goal.
She noted that while her Ministry has so many interesting areas in its mandate, she has had to dedicate “up to 80%”of her time on Estonia’s energy needs and initiatives. The need for Estonia and the other European nations to end their dependency on Russian energy supply due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and on the ongoing European Union’s climate action to reduce greenhouse gases make for a very challenging time in restructuring the energy supply and distribution in Estonia. As such, this is a critical transformation that has security, sustainability and sovereignty implications.
Minister Alender’s discussion was complemented by a slide presentation complete with bullet points, graphs and pie charts – altogether providing a comprehensive understanding of Estonia’s energy challenges and strategies.
Some of her main points are presented as follows as per general themes.
EU and Estonia Energy Security Challenges:
The EU’s (and Estonia’s) energy sourcing, supply and distribution is currently very vulnerable to geopolitical risks. For example, the historical dependence on fossil fuel imports (from Russian sources) is now upended by the war against Ukraine and the subsequent trade sanctions. This in turn has resulted in energy price volatility and unpredictability which is all negative for consumers and businesses. At the same time, the energy sector is also vulnerable to an aging grid, random cyber attacks and acts of sabotage. All of this insecurity means that significant cooperation and investment by the EU countries and by the private and public sectors is necessary to develop a more diversified and resilient energy mix. Estonia is very proactive in this energy sector transformation.
EU’s Overall Energy Independence Strategy:
Notwithstanding the turbulent geopolitical context, the EU is still committed to a more sustainable and self-reliant energy goal. In addition to an overall goal of achieving “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050, the three specific objectives are:
- “RePowerEU”, which is aimed at ending reliance on Russian fossil fuels (immediately)
- “Fit for 55”, which is aimed at reducing emissions to 55% by 2030, and:
- “Green Deal”, which is aimed at boosting renewables and energy efficiency (in the longer term)
In many ways Estonia is being recognized as a “leader by example” in this EU initiative. Estonia’s actions, such as the phasing out of its oil-shale power stations, its investments into renewables such as wind, solar and biomass energy generation, forging cross border energy connections with Finland and Latvia and ramping up cybersecurity measures to protect energy system assets are particularly noteworthy.
Estonia’s Energy Mix:
Up until 2007, Estonia’s largest energy generation was from its oil-shale power plants in Narva – accounting for 95% of the total power production in Estonia. While oil-shale has provided some self-sufficiency for Estonia’s power needs for over 50 years, its thermal power plants are recognized to be major generators of greenhouse gases and ash waste. By 2022, the oil-shale portion of the total power production had declined to 53% while Biomass, Wind and Solar renewables had grown to 33% of total power production. The total power generation in Estonia amounts to about 3,200 MegaWatts. In the past 2 years the renewables share has grown to 56% of total power – with solar power leading the way at 35%, on-shore wind turbines at 16% and biomass at 5%. Gas power plants powered by Liquid Natural Gas (largely imported from the USA) represents an 8% share of the total power generation. The Minister noted that the growth of solar power and its cost-effectiveness has been a wonderful surprise, given that Estonia has a lower overall sun exposure as a “far north” nation.
As with many coastal European countries, Estonia is also pursuing off-shore wind turbine energy generation projects.
This ongoing conversion to renewables has had its own challenges, such as the needed investments costs and land use impacts and its associated public opposition. The ongoing on-shore wind generation installations have required a costly (about 100 million euros) reconfiguring of the country’s military radar network since the numerous wind turbines were resulting in interference in the radar tracking of its airspace.
The oil-shale power generation share is still about 36% of the total. However, its role is increasingly that of providing a base-load supply back up and a “balancing” source.
Up until just last month the Estonian power grid had been interconnected with the Russian “BRELL” (Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) grid. Since 2010 this system was largely only for load balancing needs. Now the Baltic nations are directly connected to the European grid and completely disconnected from BRELL.
Estonia’s Future Power Mix Opportunities:
As with many coastal European countries, Estonia is also pursuing off-shore wind turbine energy generation projects. This is particularly controversial at the present time due to its much higher capital costs (vs. on-shore wind turbines) and thus also represents a driver to higher unit energy costs. This large scale investment is generally on hold pending a more favourable geopolitical climate and a more favourable investment context for EU lending institutions.
Estonia is looking closely at “mini nuclear” power stations as an option. Such mini plants could generate about 300 MW’s of power. Estonia energy mix could make room for 1 or 2 of such mini plants. Seemingly Poland is also pursuing this technology as well. It was noted that Minister Alender and her delegation met with Hydro One (Darlington Plant) officials to gain insights into Hydro One’s mini-plant research and development. Since such plants have an inherently long gearing up and gearing down sequence, their power would be intended to be a consistent base-load supply and could compensate for the phase-out of the oil share power plants. In the context of increasing the security and self-sufficiency of Estonia’s energy supply it seems that the country’s population is increasingly supportive of this mini-nuclear option.
Energy System Vulnerability to Cyber Attacks and Sabotage:
The Minister provided an update on the “2024 Christmas Day Estlink incident”, this being but one example of how vulnerable the energy network can be to sabotage. The incident involved a rogue freighter allegedly dragging its anchor along the bottom of the Gulf of Finland, resulting in a severing of the 1000 MW power interconnection cable between Finland and Estonia. The incident is still under investigation while the freighter is detained in Finland. The cable has not yet been repaired and as such required a rapid redistribution of power supply to the affected nations. Such acts of sabotage and cyber attacks are requiring heightened vigilance by EU agencies and NATO forces. A special collaboration known as “Baltic Sentry” is focused on increasing energy and security coordination amongst Baltic Sea NATO nations.
Summary and Q & A:
Minister Alender concluded her presentation with an overview of the next steps for Estonia in advancing and securing its energy supply and distribution grid and collaborating with EU partners. Ongoing technological innovation and investment will be a high priority for Estonia.
A wrap up Q & A session generated several follow-up discussions. Such aspects as the specific collaboration between the 3 Baltic countries to “scale and share” energy supply needs, the potential advent of hydrogen based power and the aspect of more local and decentralized power sources were discussed. Minister Alender noted that smaller biogas plants lend themselves to municipal district heating systems, that more homeowners are installing heat pumps and that small scale geothermal plants may become more viable – all of which can reduce the demands on larger scale power plants.
The presentation and discussions were very much appreciated by the attendees.
