No. 5

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The need for a new energy development plan

14 June 2002

Politics

RiTo No. 5, 2002

Despite the fact that a long-term state fuel and energy plan was approved by parliament six years ago, Estonia’s energy sector still moves forward amid ambiguities and contradictions. The old plan has simply left too many questions unanswered. Today, Estonia needs a new and more comprehensive and concrete energy plan.

First, the new plan should give a clear picture of what will be undertaken in the next ten years – what will be sought, how and when it will be achieved, what the cost is, and how it will be funded.

Second, the new plan must give a clear answer to the question of how we plan to answer new challenges that Estonian energy will face when we enter the EU and must completely liberalise the energy market in ten years.

Third, we need a clearer plan because experience has shown convincingly that energy is a sector about which the public not only wants to be briefed, but in fact insists on it.

Despite the complexity of this assignment, not everything is completely undefined when it comes to drafting a new plan, since many short-term and in some cases long-term solutions lack serious alternatives in practice. The new energy plan can only proceed from the reality that in the next thirty or forty years Estonia’s main source of electricity will be an oil shale-based system that is many times gentler on the environment than the one used currently. The importance of oil shale is based primarily on the long-term situation in the energy market and the investment in our area and second, the very high price of alternative energy. It is also likely that Eesti Energia will continue parallel work with Russia’s north-western region’s energy systems to maintain frequency and increasing reliability and efficiency; and that it will have only a direct current connection with other EU member states.

Full article in Estonian

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