To date, one tenth of Estonia's apartment buildings have been renovated.

Marge Kõrvits, chair of the Muldvalge 1 apartment association, says that in a fully renovated building, quality of life improves significantly. Heating costs have come down in buildings renovated with the help of the Estonian Business and Innovation Agency (EISA) measure as well.

"A condition for receiving this support was that it must achieve energy savings," Kõrvits noted. "I can say that while our building's heating bill in January 2023 – which was pretty cold – was €2,600, in January 2024 it was €1,400. So clearly [we're] already saving on heating bills."

With the construction market in a slump, renovation costs haven't gone up significantly, said Kristjan Soomets, financial and sales manager at general contractor company Balti Vara Ehitus. Demand for apartment building renovations, he added, remains very high.

"Definitely many times higher than what's available on the market," Soomets explained. "The main problem is the inconsistency of the support measures – if that can't be resolved, then we will always see a bottleneck at the start of each support measure, whether it's a speed round or lottery or whatever else."

Signed off on by Minister of Infrastructure Vladimir Svet (SDE) on Tuesday, the latest support round is expected to address inconsistency in funding. According to Svet, the €185 million from the EU is only the first stage of funding.

"If we take a look at structural funds, CO2 funds, the Just Transition Fund (JTF) and the Social Climate Fund (SCF), we have nearly half a billion earmarked across these four sources for building renovations over the next four years," he said. "And our hope is that the stability we feel we'll be able to provide apartment associations and the construction market with can be maintained by future governments as well, starting in 2028, 2029 and beyond."

On top of this upcoming round, another €80-90 million for renovations will be available annually for the next three years. The support rate will be between 30-50 percent, with a higher rate assigned to economically more challenged regions; in Ida-Viru County, the rate will be a full 70 percent. A lot of buildings still await renovation.

"We've calculated that around 14,000 apartment buildings need to be fully renovated by 2050," said Ivo Jaanisoo, deputy secretary general at the Ministry of Climate. "To date, more than 1,600 apartment buildings have been renovated with the help of support measures."

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