Elering: EstLink 3 electricity cable decision delayed until 2031
The schedule for the construction of Estlink 3 has been pushed back and a decision will not be made until 2031, Elering CEO Kalle Kilk has said.
The EstLink 1 and 2 electricity cables connect Estonia and Finland under the Gulf of Finland. Estlink 3 would cost over a €1 billion and be 50 percent financed by the European Union, a feasibility study found last year.
The new cable would significantly reduce the price gap between Estonia and Finland, the study said.
"The Estlink 3 schedule has been pushed back by several years at Finland's initiative. Based on our earlier understanding, we planned the earliest completion date for 2035. Today, it is more likely to be 2038 and perhaps even later," Kilk told Vikerraadio's "Reporteritund" on Tuesday.
The CEO said that a feasibility study is currently underway together with the Finns, but he does not believe it makes sense to make investment decisions based on the current feasibility study.
"Our own realistic schedule now foresees that it makes sense for us to carry out this feasibility calculation with the perspective that we will decide somewhere around 2031 or 2032. That is a sufficiently short period for us to be able to better assess what will actually work in 2038," Kilk said.
"That is quite a practical consequence of how the final deadline of the schedule is currently known," he added.
Estonian Electrical Industry Association head Tõnis Vare said this creates a source of risk, but overall, he is satisfied with Elering's direction.
"It would be good to know. Actually, what Kalle says makes it very clear that if we had a lot of foreign connections with the low-cost Nordic region, including Sweden, then our prices would be lower. The question that actually arises for us is energy security, security of supply... In that sense, I am very happy that Elering's thinking has changed. In the past, they had the idea that a power plant in Poland was just as good as one in Estonia. Now that has changed, which is very good. That is progress. But the risk is certainly that we do not know whether those foreign connections will come," he commented.
Under the current plans, EstLink 3 will be moored in the municipality of Lääne-Nigula in Aulepa, where a converter station will be built.
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Editor: Helen Wright, Aleksander Krjukov, Arp Müller
