Trends in Estonia Economic development and increasing welfare result in inc- reasing energy consumption. In recent years the consump- tion of energy has grown by up to 18 percent per year (elect- ric energy) and a stable annual increase of 5-7 percent in energy consumption is predicted for the future. At the same time, energy conservation has not developed at all. It is only in the recent years that a steep rise in the prices of energy sources (liquid fuels) and heat has created increasing interest in energy saving. Due to growing consumption of electric energy in the Baltic States and Nordic countries, exports of electric energy are Increasing. As a result, the current share of oil shale in the primary energy balance persists. If the volume of consump- tion of oil shale (currently approximately 15 million tons per year) does not decrease, new mines will have to be opened in 15 years; should the consumption volume increase, that need would be realised even earlier. The poor technical condition of (some) district heating ne- tworks (and production facilities) reduces the advantages of district heating and necessitates the transfer to local heating which is an inefficient solution for the regional heating sys- tem and restricts the potential of combined heat and power production. When compared to the year 1991, the production of heat has declined by nearly 2.4 times and stabilised at the level of 8-9 TWh per year.  Recent trends suggest that the price of gas will rise in Estonia soon, thus hindering the introduction of gas as fuel in the near future. The competitive ability of biofuels is being inhibited by the rise in prices resulting from the decrease of resources and increase of processing costs, with the prices of local biofuels being comparable to these prevailing in the world market due to the large volume of exports. The volume of firewood stock will decrease by up to two ti- mes by the year 2015, mainly due to changes in the species composition and age structure of standing crop. On the other hand, owing to processing and logistic costs the energy po- tential of logging waste has not been realised yet. From the beginning of the 1990s untill 2002 the emissions of CO, per inhabitant decreased significantly, but remained relatively high still when compared to the average level of Europe. In terms of emissions per unit area,