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In Estonia, culture and sports are mostly reliant on public funds, while in the Nordic countries, for example, these sectors see significantly more private investment from companies and private individuals. In a recent short report, the Foresight Centre highlights how these sectors could receive over ten million euros more annually if Estonian companies raised their financial donations from the current 0.5% to 3%.

According to various assessments, the green transition will require funding equivalent to 2-4% of the national GDP annually for this and the next decade. In its yearbook published at the beginning of April, the Foresight Centre emphasises that the transition to an environmentally sustainable economic model will incur high costs for consumers and require supporting measures for successful implementation. However, the transition is predicted to bring benefits to the economy in the long term.

There are nearly 10,000 households in Estonia that both consume electricity from the distribution grid and produce electricity for the distribution grid. The calculations of the Foresight Centre indicate that on 130 days a year on average, the amount of energy supplied to the grid by households is greater than the amount of energy taken from the grid. In the case of prosumers who are legal entities, the amount of energy supplied to the distribution grid is greater than the amount consumed 96 days a year.

On behalf of the Foresight Centre, economists from the University of Tartu analysed the bottlenecks of Estonian economic policy and made proposals to increase the competitiveness of the economy.

The Foresight Centre has stated in its new short report that there are 2300 people in Estonia today who have completed teacher training but do not work as teachers, which is 14% of the current total number of teachers. The reserve of teachers is largest in Harju County, Tartu County and Ida-Viru County.

According to forecasts, the amount of electricity produced in households will triple by 2035, which on the one hand increases the energy independence of Estonian households and reduces the environmental impact of electricity production, but on the other hand increases the need for controlled production capacities and transnational connections, states the Foresight Centre in its short report ‘Electricity Producing Households in Estonia’.

The solutions to the problems of the quality of teaching and of finding the next generation of teachers for schools in Tallinn and Tartu depend primarily on lightening the workload of teachers and on how competitive the profession of teaching is in the labour markets of the biggest towns says a short report by the Foresight Centre on the future for the next generation of teachers in schools in Tallinn and Tartu out to 2040.

There are several variables that affect the future need for teachers in schools in Estonia, from the number of pupils to the use of education technology. To understand the effect that the various factors have, the Foresight Centre has created a calculator for estimating the need for teachers, which can be found on its website.

Households that join together in a cooperative to produce electricity will be able to cover a significant part of their own electricity consumption in the future, reducing the costs for households and increasing security of supply says the new report from the Foresight Centre on the outlook for energy cooperatives in Estonia.

A report from the Foresight Centre on the effectiveness of Estonian schools and the factors that shape it shows that the main influence on how effective schools are comes from the socio-economic background of the families of the children in the school and the size of the school.