"For me, the most incomprehensible thing about this plan (the energy plan agreed by the leaders of the governing coalition – ed.) is the agreement to go all the way with the development of 100 percent renewable energy, which is our legal duty today – by 2030 – though, we will not get there because we have been stalling – and at the same time continue with the nuclear power plant and special planning procedure. For me, these two things are incompatible," Ossinovski said Vikerraadio's "Uudis+" show on Wednesday.

Ossinovski was commenting on an agreement between the Reform Party, Eesti 200 and SDE leader Lauri Läänemets, to announce a small tender to support the construction of onshore and offshore wind farms able to generate two terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy per year. At the same time, the agreement includes creating a guarantee mechanism for the construction of the Paldiski water reservoir as well as to proceed with the nuclear law and the special planning procedure for the nuclear power plant initiated by Fermi Energia.

"I fully understand the energy policy alternative, that we either build a renewable electricity system which we offset with other manageable capacity for energy security, or we go down the nuclear route. But in that case, building wind farms on this scale doesn't seem very appropriate to me either," Ossinovski said.

"If we build two plus two wind turbines on top of the existing system, then in fact most of the time we will already be net sellers of electricity. In other words, we are producing more than we consume. In those hours when there is less wind or less sunshine, we have to use either storage or interconnection from other countries, so the question is, where does that 600 megawatts of nuclear fit in? I would argue that it will not fit into that market," the SDE deputy chair explained.

"However, it seems to me that there was probably a need to make a kind of acoustic compromise – it was important for some partners to support the future prospect of this plant in words, so to speak," he added.

Ossinovski also stressed that the cost price of nuclear power is not low. "This is not a fuel-neutral production, which once up and running will produce at zero cost. It also has considerable operating costs, there are people working there, and the operating costs are not just for the power plant, but actually for the state to manage all this stuff. For me, this is purely a question of economic considerations, so to speak, and I do not see any economic reasons to build a nuclear power plant in Estonia.  I see even less of an economic case when we have, in fact, fuel-free electricity generation most of the time from wind and solar, which is also zero cost on the market, because they have no operating costs."

Ossinovski also sees problems with the special planning procedure for a nuclear power plant, as this cannot be done if there are no preconditions. "As things stand today, we do not have a nuclear law. This is why planning is carried out. On the one hand, in order to pre-select a site, but, on the other hand, to find a detailed solution on the basis of which we can then start building. It is not possible to identify this at the moment if we do not actually have any legal requirements on the basis of which we can begin to carry out this special planning procedure. In my opinion, this is simply an entirely premature request for the state to start spending its own human resources on implementing this planning procedure as a special national plan, and it also requires a great deal of social energy – all this publicity, these discussions and so on, in a situation where we do not really know what we are going to plan."

"But the second basis is the same. What is the special law, on the basis of which the planning experts then have to start to assess where it is suitable to put it, and how should it be handled? Well, let's take the simple things, some form of civil protection requirements – security areas, evacuation areas and other such issues. This needs to be laid down in a special law, so there is a procedure for that. How is it possible to start planning something where, as things stand at the moment, the basic data for planning has not been agreed or decided upon? I can't imagine how we could actually begin to do that," he added.

How is it possible to start planning something where, as things stand at the moment, the basic data for planning has not been agreed or decided upon? I can't imagine how we could actually begin to do that," he added.

Asked what the SDE do in the government if the draft special planning initiative was decided on by the government as a whole, Ossinovski replied that there would still have to be an agreement.

"I would certainly not support the initiation of the special planning at this stage, because the time is simply not right. We don't know what the technology is that will be used to build it; we don't really know what our own requirements are for that same plant. We actually have this whole process of coming to international agreements, of possibly having our own vision of how we are going to deal with the waste - we simply do not have that today. Whether or not we need this plant in the long term from an energy policy point of view is almost a separate discussion, but in any case, even if it is ever decided that yes, it makes sense to do it and we go ahead with it, we should still take the relevant steps in the right order," he concluded.

Ossinovski advocates subsidies for renewable energy

Ossinovski also said that he was in favor of subsidies for the development of renewable energy, as this would eventually lead to cheaper energy prices, with the gains being greater than the subsidies paid.

"We are doing this because we have seen that it works. Let's take a relatively small solar subsidy scheme, which we are currently financing at a total of around €10 million a year. That actually brings us to electricity prices of almost zero in the sunny hours. So the effect is there, that the electricity exchange price comes down as we bring more wind turbines onto the market. Somewhere, of course, there is a marginal cost to this measure, from which it no longer makes sense for the consumer to pay extra because the costs are going to be too high," he said.

Ossinovski also criticized the delay in Estonia's transition to renewable energy sources, which, he said, has led the country to have electricity prices twice as high on average as in Finland.

"If you look at the way time has been passing by leisurely, not just month after month, but year after year, with us discussing exactly the same issues, we have actually lost a lot of time. And this loss comes at a price: the Estonian consumer is paying twice as much as the Finnish consumer for electricity because we have not built the necessary renewable energy capacity in time," he said.

In this context, he also discussed the SDE's target of reaching 100 percent renewable energy production by 2030, which Prime Minister Kristen Michal (Reform) recently acknowledged was not possible by that deadline.

"First, however, it is important to recall what the foundation of this policy is. The basis of the policy is that we have upset the world's climatic balance through human activity, and this is reflected, among other things, in the fact that we have had plus five to plus ten degrees here in January. So we are already seeing it today, these negative effects. And several more years of shale-based power generation is, of course, bad, no matter what," he said.

"But it's also bad for the consumer, because the longer we consume shale-produced electricity, the more we pay for it. Twice the price of electricity than the average on the exchange in Finland – that's the real impact of delaying these decisions," Ossinovski continued, adding that he would like to see an effort to achieve the renewable energy goal. "We have had periods, for example this big boom in solar energy, where we have actually over-achieved on our targets compared to what we set before. In fact, we could look for ways to really accelerate this process."

Commenting on local opposition to onshore wind farms, Ossinovski said the state should offer support to municipalities to help explain the issue and allay people's fears.

"There is the question of who the beneficiaries are – there is the question of the radius of residents for certain local authorities, and then there is the question of the local utility instruments in the budgets of local authorities –  there may be some modifications that can be made in this context.

"Finally, the local community has to brought on board, and democracy is not easy. But I think that most people can be persuaded if the argumentation and the process is pursued and if there is a bit more support from the center," he said. "Very often people have concerns that are perfectly normal, understandable and can be addressed in every way. People are still afraid of something that they don't have here at the moment, something that feels a bit alien."

Regarding the much higher price of offshore wind farms compared to onshore wind farms and the consequent high cost of the electricity they produce, Ossinovski said there were different opinions on this, but ultimately the market would decide.

"However, there is competition in the offshore wind farm market. State-owned company Eesti Energia is also planning to build one, and of course this competition will be transparent and fair. The winner will be the one who comes up with the best result," he said.

"I think energy is a precise field in the sense that we can actually model relatively accurately what we will get from one or another investment project in terms of the price of electricity on the one hand, and how much we will have to pay for it, on the other. When we get these results, I think that on the basis of this analysis, the government will have to make the best decision for the consumer that can be made at that moment in time."

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