Households may have to pay 25% more for power from 2013
08.09.2010, 11:00Since businesses and individual households will start buying electricity on the open market in Estonia in 2013, their electricity bills could go up by 25 percent, according to the Competition Board.
The competition authority recommends to lower the renewable energy fee that has increased from 2.2 centres per kWh in 2007 to 12.6 cents in 2010.
Among others, the fee is a form of subsidiy paid to owners of wind farms, but the efficiency of such energy sources is doubtful since wind generators have a lifetime of no more than 20 years and pay themselves back in 4 to 6 years.
Estonia partly liberalised its electricity market on April 1, 2010 for consumers that use at least 2.2 GWh of power a year to the free electricity market. As a result, many Estonian manufacturers that were connected to such free market suppliers saw their electricity bills fo up between 30 and 50%.
Estonia has about 250 companies that consumer over 2 GWh of electricity a year. This is less than 35% of the electricity market. However, since the consumption of large enterprises is not sufficient to ensure that Estonia liberalised at least 35% of its electricity market from April, as agreed when Estonia joined the EU, the Estonian parliament adopted a bill that extended the scope of the new system so that 299 connection points all over Estonia are required to buy electricity from the open market.