Enefit Green will establish Estonia's largest wind energy site in Põhja-Pärnumaa
Enefit Green signed an agreement to acquire Tootsi wind farm project from Eesti Energia and plans to build the wind farms in Tootsi and Sopi at the same time. Põhja-Pärnumaa will thus become the largest wind energy production area in Estonia, doubling Estonia's current wind energy output. According to the plans, the wind farms will start producing electricity at the end of 2024.
Tootsi Wind Farm with a production capacity of 74 megawatts, so far owned by Eesti Energia, has gone through the entire planning process, the necessary connections have been ensured and building permits are in place.
Enefit Green's Sopi wind farm development with a capacity of 160 megawatts is located in the same area. This project, too, has passed the planning phase.
Enefit Green is continuing to prepare the final investment decisions for both projects simultaneously and has issued tenders to find a builder and a wind turbine manufacturer.
According to Lauri Ulm, Head of Wind Energy at Enefit Green, the simultaneous construction in Tootsi and Sopi will create the most powerful and modern wind energy production site in Estonia, taking advantage of the area of a depleted peat mine in Põhja-Pärnumaa. “38 wind turbines are planned for these wind farms to produce almost as much electricity as is currently produced from the wind in all of Estonia. We will also continue working to establish a solar park in the area and further increase the production of renewable energy,” Ulm said.
According to Hando Sutter, CEO of Eesti Energia and Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Enefit Green, the key to both the energy crisis and the green revolution is the rapid increase in renewable energy production volumes.“The more we can produce renewable electricity, the less we have to use the more expensive energy production based on fossil fuels. The renewable energy producer Enefit Green, part of the group of companies of Eesti Energia, will quadruple its wind and solar energy production capacity in the coming years with the Tootsi and Sopi projects playing an important role in achieving the energy goals of both the company and the Estonian state,” Sutter said.
The wind farms in Tootsi and Sopi are going to generate nearly 700 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, covering the annual electricity consumption of more than 200,000 households. In 2021, all wind farms in Estonia produced a total of 730 gigawatt-hours of electricity.
The cost of acquiring the wind farm was EUR 26.9 million.
Enefit Green is one of the leading growth-oriented renewable energy companies in the Baltic Sea region with the most diverse production portfolio. The company owns a total of 22 wind farms, 38 solar power plants, four CHP plants, a pellet plant and a hydroelectric power plant in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Enefit Green's shares are listed on the Nasdaq Tallinn stock exchange with the company having more than 60,000 investors. Enefit Green will quadruple its production capacity of wind and solar energy in the coming years and will invest nearly 1.5 billion euros for this purpose. The company already has four wind farms under construction with a total capacity of over 200 megawatts. Two of them in Lithuania, one in Finland and one in Estonia. As well as three solar parks – two in Poland and one in Estonia. The capacity of these parks is approximately 45 megawatts.