Summary of audit results

The Ministry of Climate and the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture have planned and implemented several actions to accelerate the development of wind farms. However, given the deadline set in the Energy Sector Organisation Act, these actions may not be sufficient and it’s unlikely that the renewable electricity target can be met by 2030. The main reason for this is that the planning and environmental impact assessment procedures, which we launched earlier, have not been made sufficiently efficient. It was also found during the audit that the EU money intended for acceleration of the uptake of renewable energy has partly been set aside and already used for activities with a questionable and indirect impact on the renewable electricity target.

Key observations

• The amendments made in 2023 to speed up the main procedural instrument for wind farm planning – the municipal designated spatial plan – do not allow for the acceleration of planning procedures initiated before the amendment. Most designated spatial plan procedures are already ongoing and following the changed to the procedural rules mean that certain procedural stages would have to be repeated. The main change is to waive the detailed solution stage of a designated spatial plan under certain conditions. This should make it possible to shorten the process by about two years for plans initiated after the change is made: from 4–5 years to 2–3 years. However, the time saved by eliminating the detailed solution stage is still not clear, as according to the experts, it’s uncertain whether this simplification can be implemented.
• It’s possible to shorten the duration of an environmental impact assessment by agreeing on key principles and improving the use of environmental data. Environmental impact assessment is usually the most time-consuming stage in the development of wind farms. This procedure can be made faster without sacrificing the quality of the assessment.
  The measures ministries have implemented so far to speed up the environmental impact assessment of wind farms will provide a time gain of only about 1–2 months. A major problem that makes environmental impact assessment more burdensome and time-consuming is the lack of agreement on which impacts are significant and which are less significant. According to specialists, a great deal of time is spent on insignificant impacts, which could be excluded from the assessment.
  Environmental assessment can also be made more efficient, faster, and cheaper by aggregating environmental data and making them available. As there is generally no high quality and up-to-date information on what the environmental conditions of wind farms planning areas are like, extensive surveys (e.g. on birds, bats, vegetation, marine life) have become part of every impact assessment. There is also no overview of surveys related to wind farms and data collected within the scope of monitoring, which makes it impossible to shorten the environmental impact assessment procedures to a greater extent. Creating an overview of surveys would give impact assessment experts the opportunity to reduce the volume of new surveys and to harmonise assessment methodologies.
• The positions of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications (the Ministry of Climate) on how to support the establishment of wind farms and meet renewable electricity targets have been contradictory. Over a short period of time, the ministry has taken the view that onshore wind farms have a low probability of success and are insufficient to meet the renewable electricity targets set for 2030 but has also found that Estonia’s renewable electricity needs can only be met by onshore wind farms, which no longer need support. However, a reverse auction for onshore wind and hybrid farms (which gives price guarantees to producers) was carried out in 2023. To facilitate the establishment of offshore wind farms, the Ministry of Climate carried out an analysis of whether and to what extent these developments would need financial guarantees (e.g. price guarantees) or other support (e.g. by building a transmission system, speeding up planning procedures). The ministry has not made any clear decisions so far.
• There are plans to grant the support allocated for acceleration of renewable energy development from the Recovery and Resilience Plan REPowerEU – €32 million – not only to necessary activities, but also to activities that are not essential for the promotion of renewable energy. For example, there are plans to allocate money for the purchase of equipment that is only indirectly connected to the acceleration of renewable energy and the need for which has not been explained by the parties. According to the Ministry of Climate, the plan is to create jobs for the performance of land operations, for example, but until municipal designated spatial plans are adopted, the need for the creation of jobs is not clear. EU support for the acceleration of renewable energy will end in 2026, but the spatial plans will not be adopted by then.

In the context of the reallocation of the areas of responsibility of ministries after 1 July 2023 (see Table 2), the audit recommendations are made to the Minister of Climate and the Minister of Regional Affairs.
 

Main recommendations 

Recommendations of the National Audit Office

• The Ministry of Climate, in cooperation with the Environmental Board, impact assessment experts and experts, agree on the limits of acceptable negative environmental impacts and the most important impacts to be assessed. This helps to focus the environmental impact assessment of wind farms and to find suitable areas for the construction of wind farms.
• The Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture, in cooperation with the parties involved, should resolve the practical issues in the planning and environmental impact assessment procedures that cause confusion, waste the time of local authorities and slow down the proceedings. For example, to resolve the question of whether a power line needed for a wind farm should always be treated as a structure with a significant spatial impact, and which type of plan should be used for planning its location.
• The Ministry of Climate should use the money from the REPowerEU support measure only for activities that have a clear link to meeting the 2030 targets.