Guarantees of origin for amount for electricity, which was produced and transferred to the system operator's network before 1 December 2020, are issued by the Ministry of Economics in accordance with Cabinet Regulation No.86 of 14 February 2017 “Procedure for Receiving Guarantees of Origin of Electricity”.
Issued guarantees of origin until 14.06.2020.
The amendments of Article 29.2 of the Electricity Market Law, which enters into force on 1 December 2020, provides improvement and integration of the Latvian system of guarantees of origin into the unified European Energy Certificate System (EECS). Further on the guarantee of origin will be issued by the transmission system operator.
Natural gas
Since April 2017, the natural gas market has been fully liberalized. The opening of the market has given both companies and households the opportunity to choose the natural gas offer that best suits their needs, opening up new opportunities for cooperation, security of supply and economic benefits.
In total, as of August 2020, 29 natural gas traders are active in the Latvian natural gas market.
The Latvian natural gas supply system is not connected to the EU's common natural gas supply system. Historically, until 2017, Latvia received natural gas only from Russia, but with the start of operation of the Klaipeda liquefied natural gas terminal in the beginning of 2015, gas supplies from Lithuania are available to Latvia. Since the end of 2017, the share of various supply sources in natural gas supplies has experienced significant short-term fluctuations, and although in general most of the annual natural gas supplies are still from Russia, in some periods Latvian consumption has been fully provided by the Lithuanian natural gas transmission system.
Latvia has the only natural gas storage facility in the Baltic region - Inčukalns Underground Gas Storage Facility (UGS), the total volume of which is 4.3 billion m3, including the volume of active natural gas of approximately 2.3 billion m3.
2020 can be considered as an unprecedented and positively significant turning point for the gas market, as the common natural gas market, which unites gas transmission system operators in Finland, Latvia and Estonia (FINESTLAT), has started operating on 1 January 2020.
This is a unique market of its kind in Europe, where in the first phase of integration there is a unified entry-exit tariff system for Finland, Estonia and Latvia, as well as a unified Latvian-Estonian balancing zone. Common transmission tariffs and the abolition of internal commercial borders significantly reduce administrative burdens for suppliers, promote efficient use of infrastructure and competition, thus ensuring economic benefits for all market participants. In the first half of 2020, the common gas market functioned well, as evidenced, among other things, by the record high demand for natural gas storage services in the Inčukalns underground gas storage facility, where available capacity for the next storage cycle was fully reserved within 24 hours.
On 20 April 2020, the Estonian, Finnish, Latvian and Lithuanian Ministries of Energy, regulators and transmission system operators agreed on a Roadmap setting out an action plan for their further integration into the common regional gas market in the future, when Lithuania joins.