ICDS researchers took a close look at the Estonia’s energy security, current challenges it faces to meet the climate targets and possible outcomes of the climate policies implementation on security of energy supplies and sustainability. The report provides an overview and in depth analyses of possible measures for future implementation of Climate policy guidelines developed by the working group assembled by the Ministry of Environmental Affairs. Authors highlight the importance to count both costs and security effects and understand relative importance of certain areas to ensure balanced climate policy implementation.
Energy security and climate policy are two of the three pillars of Energy Trilemma. Still, most of the time these two categories are not analyzed together, most of the times the discussion is about the costs of implementing stricter climate policies or about the costs of different energy security projects. ICDS with World Energy Committee tried to fill a gap by this extensive analysis. The first thing this analysis teaches is that implementing climate policy will no doubt bring additional costs, new infrastructure will have to be built and some of the old assets will become stranded. Therefore it is the role of the policymakers to minimize these costs and find optimal ways of moving from one type of energy system to another. The second thing we learned was that climate policy measures don’t necessarily have negative impacts on energy security. Negative impacts can be avoided if climate policy takes into account the local circumstances and the actual needs and capabilities of the energy sector. Authors stress that a sustainable future is one that is mainly fueled by renewable energy, but it is also one that we can afford. It is a future where we will achieve our climate goals, but it is also one where we will have guaranteed our energy security. A sustainable future is one where we have managed to balance Estonia’s energy trilemma.
The report is a joint project of Estonian Ministry of Environment, Tallinn University of Technology, International Centre for Defence and Security and World Energy Council Estonia.
Download: Impacts of Climate Policy on Estonian Energy Security (PDF)