Greenhouse gas emissions and peat extraction in the midst of discusssions at Riga

Partners of the GreenIndustrialAreas project met in Riga, Latvia, on April 1st and 2nd, 2025. The partner meeting was used to finalize the project’s main outputs, including a guideline regarding the certification of “green” industrial areas. According to the consortium’s decisions, those must have a share of renewable energies in the total energy use of at least 50 per cent. Green industrial areas should furthermore be forerunners in reducing the environmental impact of their activities in other domains such as land use or water usage. An additional threshold for greenhouse gas emissions were subject of intensive debate but eventually discarded as energy use is in most cases their main source. The partners also visited a peat extraction site near the Jelgava, south of Riga. The company there aims at turning the entire area into a green industrial area with Latvia’s largest on-shore wind park soon to be be erected.