.png){kind=small}
Private Story
Ida-Virumaa, moving the Estonian mountains
Summary
In the north-east of Estonia, apart from the fact that everyone speaks Russian, what is surprising when one comes from Tallinn the capital, are these high chimneys, ghost villages and mountains of black ashes... Here, in the Oriental Viru region, facing the Russian giant from which it is trying at all costs to emancipate itself, the Baltic country draws its energetic independency from the extraction of oil shale. But this lead the country to be the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in the European Union and the one of largest oil shale extractor in the world.
*This page is a working area / please, do not share publicly*
(some pictures shall be removed, added and/or re-ordered. Captions shall be completed)
On June 4th 2020 Estonia approved the European Union Green Deal. This decision is the starting point for an unprecedented transformation of a unique mining region in the country, but also in the EU and the world: Ida Virumaa. This photodocumentary portrays the people who have shaped this region through generations. It will be about communities, landscapes and industry in a country that is definitely looking to the future but where the troubled soviet history of the last century is still very much present.
In the north-east of Estonia, apart from the fact that everyone speaks Russian, what is surprising when you come from Tallinn the capital, are these high chimneys, ghost villages and mountains of black ashes... Here, in the Oriental Viru region (or Ida-Virumaa), facing the Russian giant from which it is trying at all costs to emancipate itself, the Baltic country draws its energetic independency from the extraction of oil shale.
This relatively unknown situation gives Estonia a unique energy position: the country is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in the European Union and the largest oil shale extractor in the world (to check). These sedimentary rocks are burned to produce heat and electricity but also liquefied to extract hydrocarbons. In 2020, electricity produced from oil shale accounted for 53% (40% from oil shale and 13% from shale oil gaz) of the national electricity production and give the country the lowest energy dependency in the European Union (10.5%).
But from 2019 the CO2 emission prices unexpectedly jumped (2017 at around €5, 2019 at around €25, 2022 at almost €100). Estonia can no longer afford to depend on this energy only. And it has to reduce its CO2 emissions in order to achieve energy neutrality under the Green Deal framework by 2050. Estonia wants to stop using oil-shale in its energy mix by 2035.
The challenge is to undertake a «fair transition». In 2021, the mining and quarrying industry employed 0.6% of the whole Estonian population in a region where the unemployment rate (11% in 2020) is already the highest in Estonia (6% in 2020). Moreover, today, the wage in the mining and quarrying industry (€1840 in 2021) is above the national average (€1548 in 2021) and it is a profession that has been passed down in families through generations with the pride of those who feed a whole country.
While the region is still suffering from post-USSR de-industrialisation, who are those who will pay the high cost of Estonia carbon neutrality ? And how can Estonia afford reaching its ambitious goal in the new energetic crisis provoked by the war in Ukraine ?
This ongoing work is a subjective portrait of the region through the prism of its oil shale industry and culture. It is an encounter with those who are shaping the region at the landscape, economic and cultural levels.
872
