Skip to content
PoliticalRepoPoliticalRepo

Estonia · Law · SE

350

Act on Amendments to the Natural Gas Act and the Electricity Market Act

avaldatud riigiteatajasEstonia· Riigikogu· ET

Introduced

12 December 2016

Last action

—

Status

AVALDATUD_RIIGITEATAJAS

Sponsors

—

Subjects

Discovery layer

Source updated

14 June 2017

Official sourceDownload fileView documentsShare

Summary

The aim of the bill is to increase Estonia's energy security, make the Estonian gas market more open and encourage competition between sellers. In order to increase Estonia's energy security, a gas reserve regulation is created for domestic consumers and companies producing heat for residential heating, according to which the system manager must keep the gas reserve in an amount that meets the requirements stipulated in the relevant EU regulation. In the interests of energy security, the draft establishes an obligation, that the gas reserve can only be stored in a European Union country. The gas reserve is used when there is a serious supply failure in the gas system. According to the draft, a more detailed requirement is set for the gas system manager, which is Elering AS, to keep a gas reserve for domestic consumers and companies producing heat for residential heating in order to ensure at least 30 days of gas supply security in the event of a supply disruption. To make the Estonian gas market more open and competition between sellers to facilitate this, the system manager is required to develop a gas market data exchange platform that allows the consumer to get a periodic overview of gas consumption and with which gas sellers can be changed. The bill regulates the changes to the obligation to maintain the balance, according to which the balance of the gas system will be kept in energy units at the contractual pressure of 1 atm and temperature of 0 °C. The provision of the bill reduces the administrative burden on gas sellers, according to which they will only be required to register instead of an activity license. A gas seller who sells gas to domestic consumers no longer has to coordinate the standard conditions of the sales contract with the Competition Authority. It is enough if the seller has published the standard terms and conditions on his website. The explanatory note states that gas makes up a relatively low share in Estonia's energy balance - less than 5 percent. Gas is used the most in Estonia by the district heating sector - 40 percent, followed by industry with 23 percent. Domestic consumers use natural gas for 12 percent of their annual gas consumption. The share of gas in Estonian district heating is decreasing, gas boilers are being replaced by wood chip boilers. For example, in Tallinn, 60 percent of gas is still used for district heating. This share will decrease to less than half next year, and in a few years gas will be used only to cover the peak load - then gas will make up 20 percent of Tallinn of the fuel needed for the production of district heating. Estonia is essentially an energy island when it comes to gas – we are physically separated from the rest of Europe's gas system. The same applies to Finland and Latvia. Most of the gas used in Estonia is supplied by Gazprom.

Machine translation from Estonian. The official text remains authoritative.

Timeline

No timeline events have been ingested for this record yet.

Votes

No vote records are attached yet.

Versions

No version snapshots stored. Document URLs remain at the source.

Documents

26 official files

Lõpptekst bdoc

View fileDownload file

Sponsors

No sponsors or actors listed by the source.

Related records

No cross-record relationships stored yet.

Sources

PoliticalRepo is an index and interpretation layer, not the authoritative legal source.