A precise point made on Twitter: “...is it possible in principle for Latvia to return to the widespread use of peat in energy production?”

“No! We are not Finns who can afford to literally and immediately disregard European Union guidelines for their own needs. Our own journalists would be screaming as if they had been slaughtered!”

It seems that few will not have noticed the earthquake that has shaken the energy resource market over the last year. To mitigate the potential impact of an energy crisis, more than one European country has been forced to carefully consider which fuel to use for electricity and heat production. And eyes are often turning towards forgotten or unused local energy resources. In Latvia, that resource is peat.

However, the question of whether and to what extent Latvia’s peat can be used for energy needs is difficult to answer for several reasons.

Peat has been extracted in Latvia since the 17th century, but it has practically not been used for energy since 2003, when the Riga CHPP-1 was reconstructed to use natural gas as fuel. Furthermore, the European Union (EU) classifies peat as a fossil fuel; therefore, it cannot be used for heat production for a certain period in boiler houses built or renovated with the support of EU structural funds. As a result, 6,000 tonnes of energy peat were extracted in Latvia in 2021, and peat accounted for 0.04% of Latvia’s total energy balance.