At the end of January, the chairs of Estonia's governing parties reached a deal to hold reverse auctions for 2 terawatt-hours (TWh) of production each for the construction of offshore and onshore wind farms. The government is also planning a support measure for the Paldiski energy storage facility and to move ahead with plans for a nuclear power plant.

The government discussed the issue again on Thursday. However, the energy plan has not yet been formally adopted. Eesti 200 Chair Kristina Kallas told ERR that the parties have already agreed on everything, though the figures and tables in the explanatory memorandum still need to be made more concrete.

"That was the reason why we postponed the decision by a week, so that the explanatory memorandum would be as concrete as possible in terms of the calculations and the tables and figures. As both the Auditor General and some members of the government had questions about certain figures in the explanatory memorandum, it was purely technical matter whereby we needed to rewrite the explanatory memorandum in a more logical and clearer way," Kallas said.

Kallas confirmed that she now has the full picture in front of her in order to make decisions regarding the energy plan, and that the calculations provided by the Ministry of Climate are comprehensive.

"The cost price of electricity will actually fall quite significantly if we build more of this energy capacity, and we have to build it as quickly as possible. The increase in the price of electricity from renewable sources is actually much less than the decrease in the cost price of electricity. Ultimately, the price of electricity for the end user will still be cheaper than it is today. So all these calculations are there and they are now clear to us," Kallas said.

"The storage component is crucial. It will add 0.5 cents to the price of electricity, but the storage will ensure that we are able to consume the wind energy produced offshore even if there is no wind offshore on a particular day. That we will be able to make offshore wind energy more manageable, which also ensures the renewable energy fee we pay to build up this capacity, will come back to the Estonian consumer," Kallas said.

The governing parties have also decided to initiate a special planning process to identify a site for the possible location of a nuclear power plant.

However, on Wednesday, Jevgeni Ossinovski, deputy chair of the Social Democratic Party (SDE), said the special planning procedure should not be initiated at all at this stage because the nuclear law, which is a prerequisite for it, needs to be adopted first. Ossinovski questioned how it is possible to start planning something, when the basic data required for the planning has not actually been agreed on in Estonia.

According to Kristina Kallas both processes are in fact taking place simultaneously.

"The absence of a nuclear law is not an obstacle to the first phase of this specific planning procedure. The drafting of the nuclear law is also in progress and is part of the agreement, so these processes are actually moving forward in parallel," Kallas said.

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