Estonian power plants produced 5,516 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity during 2020, which equals three quarters of the amount produced in 2019, Statistics Estonia said on Monday.

The amount of electricity produced from oil shale decreased by half.

Helle Truuts, analyst at Statistics Estonia, observed that electricity production from renewable energy sources continued to grow last year, with electricity production from wood growing by 13 percent to account for a quarter of total electricity production, wind energy production amounting to 843 GWh, 23 percent more than the year before, and the production of hydro energy more than doubling compared to 2019.

Electricity produced from oil shale accounted for 40 percent of total electricity production. Heat generation at power plants totaled 4,518 GWh, which is 5 percent less than in the previous year.

Increasing amounts of electricity and thermal energy are produced at cogeneration plants in Estonia. As a result, electricity production decreased by nearly 7 percent year on year. At the same time, the share of electricity produced in the cogeneration process grew to nearly 26 percent of total production.