Assessment of Latvia’s Territorial Just Transition Plan
February 22, 2023
Latvia’s just transition regions – Latgale, Vidzeme, Zemgale and Kurzeme – are supposed to stop extracting and using peat for energy. Instead, with the help of EU funding allocated to various measures and projects through a Territorial Just Transition
Riga’s climate neutrality planning: an example of realistic ambition and public engagement
February 15, 2023
This briefing provides an overview of the planning process Riga city council took when designing the Riga Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan Until 2030, as well as insight into the plan itself.
REPowerEU is a chance to prioritise renovating buildings in Latvia
November 30, 2022
Energy consumed in the residential sector accounts for up to 30 per cent of Latvia’s energy usage. Approximately 23,000 multi-apartment buildings need to be renovated, but only 1,600 buildings have been insulated since 2009, a renovation rate of 0.5 per year. Will Latvia seize the chance and use REPowerEU chapters for renovation?
Biodiversity forgotten in the Latvian recovery plan
April 8, 2021
There is less than one month left for Member States to submit their national recovery and resilience plans to the European Commission. Yet, the Latvian plan is still far from fulfilling the Commission’s requirements to allocate at least 37% of proposed measures to achieving climate objectives.
More of the same secrecy in Latvia and Romania as EU recovery funds planning gets underway
March 10, 2021
National Recovery and Resilience Plans have to be submitted to the European Commission by 30 April, 2021. Yet less than two months before the deadline, the latest updates from the Romanian and Latvian recovery plans raise alarm on public participation and on unambitious climate and energy targets.
District heating – the role of EU investments in Latvia
February 10, 2021
Heating is a basic need in Latvia, where the average heating season lasts 200 days. More than half (58%) of Latvia’s primary energy consumption is used for heating. This report from Bankwatch and Green Liberty analyses the district heating projects implemented in Latvia with the support of EU funds during the last 20 years.
A breath of fresh air: How Latvia can increase wind power capacity tenfold by 2030
December 16, 2019
When it comes to wind energy, Latvia lags far behind its neighbours.
The renovation will be televised: Latvia’s energy efficiency programme for multi-apartment buildings
January 23, 2018
A pressing challenge in post-Soviet cities and towns is the conversion of modernist planning into a contemporary and sustainable built environment.
All at SEA – key assessment of EU funds programmes in Latvia fails to address environmental concerns, opportunities
August 15, 2013
There is a big long list of technical jargon attached to the programming documents of the EU funds for the 2014-2020 funding period – enough to fill an entire blog post on its own. But you will be relieved to read that, in the context of Latvia’s ongoing negotiations as to how we will spend our future EU budget money, I will focus on only one of these items. It may be a bit of a mouthful, but it is what it says it is – only in Latvia, as environmental NGOs are discovering, what should be a safeguard for the environment appears to have gone missing.
