Dienas Bizness reports an interesting feature of our country's geography – we have the second highest wind energy value coefficient in the world per 1,000 sq km of exclusive economic zone, after Jordan. Lithuania, Belgium, and Estonia follow.
As early as 1920, there were 147 windmills operating in the young Latvian Republic, with the highest number, 48, located in Vidzeme. By 1938, their number had increased to 231.
"After World War II, most of the windmills were restored, but they gradually faced tougher competition from industrial flour production. In small volumes and only for self-consumption, wind generators in Latvia were used both during the first republic and in the Soviet era for the needs of agricultural buildings.
With the completion of rural electrification, the wind rotors from the agricultural buildings of collective farms and state farms were dismantled."
The revival of wind energy began in 1995 when the first two generators from Latvenergo appeared in Ainaži – the first in the Baltics. However, in terms of gross electricity production from wind, Latvia is now hopelessly lagging behind neighboring republics: in 2024, Lithuania produced 3,448 million kilowatt-hours of electricity (equivalent to the operation of one to one and a half nuclear reactors), Estonia – 1,166 million (equivalent to a medium-sized hydroelectric power station), while Latvia produced only 276 million, comparable to the operation of one small thermal power plant.
