The Riigikogu discussed the problems relating to wind farms as a matter of significant national importance

Today, the Riigikogu held a deliberation of the matter of significant national importance “The downside of the wind industry”, initiated by the Estonian Conservative People’s Party Group.

In his report, energy expert Margus Sild gave an overview of the price of wind energy for the end user and the state. “At the moment, I can see that with the help of statistics they try to sell to the population the idea that large-scale wind energy and solar energy are beautiful, nice and green. Unfortunately, it is not so,” he said.

In his opinion, wind energy is only suitable for use on a small scale, for small businesses and households, as wind energy is not permanent. “There is no point in putting too much non-permanent energy into the general network, because whenever the wind dies down or the sun sets, we have to compensate for this energy from some other sources,” said Sild. “We cannot say that we produce as much energy from renewable sources per year as we consume, because this energy cannot be put in a can, stored and used later. There must always be a balance between production and consumption in the network. If this balance is not there, it can lead to the collapse of the entire network.”

Urmas Maranik, a member of the NPO For Nature and People, focused on wind energy planning and assessing the associated impact. According to him, there has been a lack of central coordination and overview of the plans from the very beginning.

“To put it simply, developers have been given free reign to operate all over Estonia, so to speak. Everyone plans and develops where and as they see fit. And that is how we end up with regions where there are many wind farms or wind farm regions clustered together, next to each other,” said Maranik. According to him, another problem is that present-time wind farm regions have mostly been planned in forested areas and that protected areas for protected animal and bird species have not been taken into account in the planning process.

Doctor Anti Kukkela spoke about the health effects of wind turbines in his presentation. He noted that the acoustic energy generated by a wind turbine could be audible to human ear, but not the infrasound component. “You have probably all heard the saying that what you cannot hear cannot hurt you. But this statement is not true and whoever says so is deliberately spreading lies,” he said.

According to Kukkela, in other European countries where wind power plants have been operating for years, there have been cases of people getting sick in the areas of influence of the turbines. “Many of these people have lost their ability to work and some people have been forced to abandon their homes because of the negative health effects of the wind turbines,” he noted.

Member of the Estonian Conservative People’s Party Group Rain Epler called for the use of oil shale in his presentation. “There will be no need to store ad hoc power generation capacities, we will get very cheap electricity,” he said, adding that the time and money freed up from this could be used to build a nuclear power plant. “Cheap energy is very important for a strong economy, and a strong economy is very important for a strong country,” he added.

Mario Kadastik from the Estonian Reform Party Group, Anti Poolamets from the Estonian Conservative People’s Party Group, Riina Sikkut from the Social Democratic Party Parliamentary Group and Riina Solman from Isamaa Parliamentary Group took the floor during the debate. Non-attached Member of the Riigikogu Peeter Ernits also took part in the debate.

Photos (Erik Peinar / Chancellery of the Riigikogu)

Verbatim record of the sitting (in Estonian)

The video recording will be available to watch later on the Riigikogu YouTube channel.

Riigikogu Press Service
Karin Kangro
+372 631 6356, +372 520 0323
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