Electricity Cost as a Driver of Competitiveness in Northern Europe: The Case of Estonia

The Estonian electricity market will be fully opened in 2013. Given ever-stricter environmental standards limiting the use of domestically available oil shale as main fuel for electricity generation and expansion of regional power pools, it is widely believed that Estonia’s currently low electricity prices are set to increase. Authors argue that cost differentiation and regional competition will be based on transmission charges and add-on fees. Measuring exporting industry’s total electricity costs as a share of total production costs shows that for the majority of Estonian producers electricity costs make up only around 1–2 % of production costs, but noteworthy exceptions exist.