Estimate: Estonia's electricity consumption can be covered by wind farms in 2030

TALLINN – The Environment Agency, which has carried out an analysis of the wind farm projects currently under development in Estonia, estimates that there are already enough developments in the pipeline for private and state land to meet the target of securing 100 percent of the country's electricity consumption from onshore wind farms by 2030.

At present, the total installed wind energy capacity in Estonia is approximately 359 megawatts (MW), plus 325 megawatts in developments under construction that will be completed next year. In addition, there are 21 designated spatial plans and 15 general spatial plans for wind energy development in the pipeline across Estonia, Peep Siim, from the Environment Agency's analysis and reporting department, and senior specialist Barbel Vandel say in the Environment Agency's blog.

"Developers estimated this summer that nearly 6,705 megawatts of onshore wind energy developments are being planned across the country. In order to clarify the plans of the developers, we carried out an additional analysis, in which we focused on the projects where notarized agreements have already been concluded with the landowners. We left out verbal agreements," the officials said.

Judging by the notarized land use agreements concluded by developers and the Nordic experience in building wind farms, the authors concluded that of onshore wind generating capacities that will probably be completed by 2030, roughly 2,400 megawatts are under works right now.

The authors of the analysis emphasize that this is an assessment that is subject to change over time, based only on notarized agreements and the statistics for completed wind farms. The eventual total installed capacity will depend on the status of spatial plans, the specific wind farms and their location.

If 15-20 percent of the 2,390 MW of developments fail to materialize due to the specificities of the terrain, the state may need to intervene. To this end, the Environment Agency has launched a research program for additional wind energy development of up to 1,000 megawatts in 22 areas on state-owned land. The results of the studies will be available in mid-2024.