RIGA, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Latvia increased both generation and consumption of renewable energy in 2016, the national statistics office informed on Tuesday.
Compared to 2015, the generation of electric power from renewable sources jumped 25.4 percent to 3,482 GWh in 2016, while the consumption of renewables rose 5.7 percent year-on-year to 68.7 petajoules (PJ), according to the data released by the statistics office.
Over the past decade, the consumption of renewables in Latvia has grown 14.1 percent.
Representatives of the statistics office noted that the growing consumption of renewable energy, which is mostly generated from local sources, reduced Latvia's reliance on energy imports. While in 2007 imported energy made up 66.7 percent of all energy consumed in Latvia, in 2015 the figure was down to 51.2 percent.
Consumption of fuelwood, for instance, rose to 54.3 PJ last year, which was a 3.2 percent increase against 2015 and a 9.3 percent growth over the past decade. Fuelwood accounted for 29.4 percent of all renewables consumed in Latvia in 2016.
Consumption of biogas in Latvia surged 12.7 times over the decade to 3.8 PJ in 2016, the statistics office said.
Latvia has a target of 40 percent of energy use coming from renewable sources by 2020. The Baltic country already boasts the third highest rate of renewable energy consumption in Europe (after Sweden and Finland), with renewables accounting for 37.6 percent of all energy consumed in Latvia in 2015 as compared to 16.7 percent across the European Union.
