8. RENEWABLE ENERGY
Demand-side flexibility can support VRE integration by allowing electricity demand to be intentionally adjusted to compensate for the variable generation of wind and PV. A simple option for introducing demand-side flexibility is financial agreements between utilities and large industrial and commercial customers that provide incentives to decrease or increase electricity consumption at the request of the utility to help balance VRE generation. Estonia could also leverage the national deployment of smart metres, which in combination with time-of-day pricing can be used to encourage patterns of electricity demand that better align with VRE generation.
Electrification can support VRE integration by creating additional demand for generation from wind and PV. It can also be one of the more effective options for introducing renewable energy into the transport and heating sectors. Electrification also creates additional opportunities for demand-side flexibility. The sections on renewables in heat and transport provide additional insights on how electrification could support achieving Estonia’s renewable energy targets.
Bioenergy
Electricity from bioenergy increased from 0.3% to 10.2% of total electricity generation between 2008 and 2018. This growth was driven by deployment of CHP plants using domestic forestry biomass. In 2017, biomass CHP covered 85.9% of the electricity from bioenergy. CHP plants are among the most efficient means to capture the useful energy in biomass as they produce both heat and electricity. However, this also creates complications as these plants operate in two separately regulated markets. Despite being one of the largest contributors to renewable electricity, CHP plants in Estonia are designed primarily to provide heat to district heating networks with electricity generation a secondary revenue source. As such, electricity incentives alone may not be adequate to drive additional biomass CHP deployment.
The feed-in premium of the previous support scheme seems to have helped to drive significant growth in bioenergy as it guaranteed an additional payment on all electricity sales. The transition to technology-neutral auctions could remove this incentive as it is not clear that biomass CHP or other bioenergy electricity technologies can compete on a cost-only basis with wind and solar. Estonia should examine whether or not targeted subsidies for electricity from bioenergy are needed, especially in the context of CHP, and if so whether or not the planned auction process will allow bioenergy projects to make competitive bids.
It is also critical to note that well over 90% of the growth in bioenergy from 2008-18 was based on consumption of biomass from domestic forestry (IEA, 2018a). For bioenergy to support continued expansion of renewables, and achievement of the 2020 and 2030 targets, Estonia will need a sustainable supply of low-cost biomass.
EU regulations on land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), and national sustainable land-use and forestry plans place significant limits on annual biomass production (Government of Estonia, 2018d). The government has stated that the sustainability requirements allow for significant increases in biomass production (Government of Estonia, 2017a). However, while biomass production in Estonia doubled in the period 2007-17, the quantity of biomass available for domestic consumption remained essentially flat, at around 0.8-0.9 Mtoe due a steady increase in biomass exports, which reached a third of total production in 2018 (IEA, 2019).
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8. RENEWABLE ENERGY
The draft NECP and the NDPES reflect Estonia’s clear understanding of the challenges and importance of maintaining a sustainable supply of biomass for renewable energy projects. Current laws and regulations give the government numerous tools to monitor and regulate the level of biomass production (Government of Estonia, 2017a). However, national plans do not discuss the impact of a growing share of biomass exports, or clearly establish the quantity of domestic biomass production that will be needed to support a sustained expansion of renewable electricity generation in line with the 2020 or 2030 targets.
A comprehensive review including an examination of biomass sustainability, the potential of other bioenergy resources, and a detailed technical analysis of the most economic and secure manner to increase the bioenergy share in renewable electricity would help to determine how bioenergy can best support the achievement of Estonia’s 2020 and 2030 goals. Such a review should also examine how the design and operation of CHP plants and the functioning of electricity and heat markets could be adjusted to allow CHP to play a greater and more flexible role in electricity generation. For example, adding heat storage to existing CHP plants or requiring heat storage on newly constructed plants would reduce the need to closely follow heat demand and allow for more flexibility in electricity generation.
The potential role of waste in renewable energy should also be examined. Nonrenewable waste makes a small contribution in meeting Estonia’s energy demand, covering 2% of TPES (0.11 Mtoe) and 1.1% of electricity generation (0.14 terwatt hour [TWh]). However, the reported data show no renewable energy contribution from waste- to-energy. It is recommended that Estonia review its waste-to-energy data and practices to determine if this resource is making a contribution to its renewable energy targets.
Waste-to-energy contributions to TPES and electricity appear to come from a single 17 MWe (megawatts of electricity) CHP unit at the Iru Power Plant. This unit has operated since 2013 and burns municipal solid waste to generate electricity and to produce heat for the district heating network serving Tallinn and the surrounding area. This dedicated waste-to-energy unit has reduced the amount of waste sent to landfills, but the requirement to keep the unit operating at a minimal level combined with a reduction of municipal waste in Estonia has resulted in a need to import waste from other countries (ERR, 2016).
Measures supporting renewable heat
The NDPES sets a target for 2030 of an 80% renewable energy share in heat consumption. In 2017, the share in residential and commercial heating was 57%. However, there is no coherent national support scheme that clearly drives achievement towards the 80% target. Most heat-related policy is set on a regional or municipal level; however, the government has periodically introduced small support schemes for renewable heat, often in relation to the renovation of buildings or heating systems.
A national support scheme encourages increased use of high-efficiency renewable energy in small residential heating systems. The scheme provides a direct payment to owners of small residential buildings to replace a liquid fuel heating system with equipment using renewable energy. The scheme covers 40% of the cost of the new system, with a maximum payment of EUR 4 000. National planning documents do not reference this plan, nor note what level of contribution it is expected to provide towards renewable targets.
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ENERGY SYSTEM TRANSFORMATION
8. RENEWABLE ENERGY
The government may review existing heat policy, including local and municipal regulations, to determine if any additional support mechanisms are needed to ensure that the 80% target can be achieved. Such a review could also examine the heavy reliance on biomass, which covers essentially all renewable heat production in Estonia. It would be good to determine what share of the 80% target can be sustainably covered with biomass and to examine options to diversify the mix of renewable energy in heat production. These options could include high efficiency heat pumps powered with renewable electricity for space heating and solar thermal water heaters to meet residential and commercial hot water. Solar water heaters are a well-established technology with one of the lower cost options for hot water and have been shown to work effectively even in colder climates (Mussard, 2017).
Measures supporting renewables in transport
Estonia has struggled to make progress on the 2020 target of 10% renewable energy in the final consumption of the transport sector. In 2017, the share of renewables in transport was only 0.32%, not much higher than it was a decade earlier. In response to the slow uptake of renewables in transport, the government amended the Liquid Fuel Act in 2018, mandating that biofuels cover an increasing percentage of the energy content of petrol and diesel that is imported, stored or sold in Estonia. The amendment requires biofuel shares of 3.1% in 2018, 6.4% in 2019 and 10% in 2020 (Government of Estonia, 2019). Moreover, starting in 2019, second-generation biofuels (produced from waste and residues) must account for at least 0.5% and first-generation biofuels (produced from agriculture) must not exceed 7% of total energy.
Government data for 2018 show a 3.7% renewable share in transport, indicating that the biofuel mandate has been successful. This rapid increase in the share of renewable energy in transport is a significant achievement, but still leaves a large gap to achieve the 2020 target. Fuel sector stakeholders have expressed concerns that the industry may have difficulties in achieving the target by 2020 (see Chapter 4, specifically Box 4.1). In addition, the biofuel mandate may not ensure achievement of the target, as it is not clear if it applies to all transport fuels consumed in Estonia (EC, 2019).
As there is currently no biofuel production in Estonia, the biofuel mandate does not address the government’s goal of using local renewable energy sources, as expressed in the NECP. The biofuels mandate will require the sustained import of significant quantities of biofuels to maintain the 10% share of renewables in transport. To address this concern, the government passed the Act on Biomethane Market Development Support in 2015, which created support schemes for domestic production and consumption of biomethane, with the aim to have biomethane cover 3% of transport energy demand by 2020 and 10 fuelling stations in operation in 2020 (Government of Estonia, 2015). The support scheme is managed by the Estonian Environmental Investments Centre and provides the following subsidies:
EUR 3 million for deployment of biomethane fuelling stations, with the subsidy for each station limited to EUR 350 000 based on 35% of project construction costs
EUR 6 million for public transit systems to purchase biomethane vehicles, with the subsidy limited to EUR 4 million per transit system based on 30% of the total cost of all vehicles purchased.
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