Page 24 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine May 2024

24 I Companies & Markets bne May 2024
Latvia does not want to lag behind
Latvia does not plan to lag behind its neighbours in its nuclear ambitions. The country’s Ministry of Climate and Energy (KEM) stated at the presentation of a report to the Saeima's [parliament] Environment, Climate and Energy Subcommittee in March that, in order not to increase Latvia's dependence on electricity from other countries, the possibility of developing nuclear energy should be considered.
The report also named six places in Latvia as potential sites for a nuclear reactor, one of which is at Lake Razna in Latgale region.
“In the timeline, we could talk about the year 2035, probably because there are more questions than answers at the moment,” the ministry says.
A second option for Latvia could involve Estonia, which is generally regarded as having better geological conditions for the construction of a nuclear plant. It would also solve the issue of nuclear waste storage, which worries Latvian environmental activists.
Yet Baiba Jakobsone, Deputy Director of the Strategic Coordination Department at the Latvian Ministry of Climate and Energy, told bne IntelliNews that “modular reactors have a long way to go.”
“Latvia is interested in following the development of regulation [on nuclear power development] in Estonia, as a large part of the regulation is security-related. Estonia and Latvia have agreed to exchange information on regulatory progress,” she says, adding: “We are at an early planning stage now when we start discussions.”
In the quest, Latvia plans to carry out an in-depth study on the development of a nuclear energy programme in accordance with the guidelines developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“The ministry plans to conclude the procurement procedure for the studies by October this year,” Jakobsone says.
In line with the forecasts of the Latvian transmission system operator (JSC Augstsprieguma Tīkls) for an optimistic scenario, by 2030 wind energy will be the largest source of power, contributing 4,356 TWh per year (including 1,386 TWh by offshore wind and 2,97 TWh by onshore wind energy.
Large hydropower plants will remain significant and the second largest source of power with an estimated contribution of 2,673 TWh. Meanwhile the role of gas is forecast to decline to approximately 0.233 TWh per year.
“Regardless of how much one is pro-wind and pro-solar,
or pro any other [energy] source, nuclear energy provides something unique – reliability and comfortability that is
not relevant to weather conditions. Even the countries with developed wind and solar energy understand that you need a counter-balancing energy source, which nuclear energy is,” Jankauskas emphasised.
Concurring, Juris Ozolins says: “Nuclear power plants still remains as perhaps the most reliable good-quality and the easiest-manageable source of electricity but the technology we want is still not here, so, like the others, we have to wait, but the picture by the end of the decade can already be different.”
“Nuclear power is seeing a lot of interest now...At the moment, we are in a kind of waiting mode, looking what will happen [with nuclear power] not only in Europe, but also in the United States and Canada and elsewhere...But nuclear energy now is in much better positions compared where it was just relatively recently, so talks about a renaissance of nuclear energy are not baseless,” he says.
Chinese investor buys licence for Slovakia’s flying car project
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Slovakia’s AirCar project has sold its licence to a Chinese investor for an undisclosed sum. AirCar is a dual-mode car-aircraft vehicle that transforms from sports car into light aircraft at the click of a button. A prototype completed its first inter-city flight from Nitra to Bratislava in 2021.
Referring to its sources, the liberal daily DennikN wrote that “the licence was sold for about the same price” as the entire AirCar development has cost, “in the volume of €2mn”.
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With the returns, AirCar is set to complete production plans in Slovakia for the European and American markets.
DennikN pointed out that AirCar’s precursor, AeroMobil, which was unveiled by Albert II of Monaco, went bankrupt and that its designer, Stefan Klein, left AeroMobil seven years before its bankruptcy in 2016 to join the new project AirCar.
“AeroMobil spent altogether €25mn on its development,