Through its collaboration with NetZeroCities, the Smart Cities Marketplace is supporting the City of Liepāja, Latvia, in developing an innovative renewable-energy community that will advance the city's climate-neutrality ambitions, strengthen local energy resilience, and increase the use of locally generated renewable energy.
As part of this collaboration, Smart Cities Marketplace experts provided an independent review of the draft pre-feasibility study for Liepāja's Energy Community Project. The support focused on assessing the project's strategic, technical, financial, governance and implementation aspects, helping the city further strengthen the foundations for future project development and investment preparation. Smart Cities Marketplace experts will provide an additional review once the final version of the Pre-feasibility Study is ready.
The review confirmed the project's strong alignment with Liepāja's decarbonisation objectives and highlighted several positive elements, including a robust site assessment methodology, comprehensive analysis of renewable energy resources, careful consideration of grid connection requirements, and a clear vision for establishing a municipal renewable energy community. The proposed project is centred on local renewable energy generation and self-consumption, supporting both climate and energy security goals.
The cooperation demonstrates how Smart Cities Marketplace and NetZeroCities can work together to provide cities with targeted expertise at critical stages of project preparation. By combining complementary knowledge and experience, the two initiatives help cities strengthen project pipelines, improve investment readiness and accelerate the delivery of climate-neutral solutions.
For Liepāja, the support marks an important step towards creating a renewable energy community that can deliver long-term benefits for the municipality, local businesses and citizens while contributing to broader European energy transition objectives.