On 30 October, we organised the Nordic-Baltic Energy Resilience Summit in Daugavpils in cooperation with the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Daugavpils City Municipality. The summit brought together more than 200 participants, showing that energy security is an important topic for both Daugavpils, Latvia’s second largest city, and the wider Latgale region.
The summit focused on regional energy infrastructure, investment opportunities and business development, as well as the skills needed for the future labour market and the role of artificial intelligence in the energy sector. We were especially pleased to welcome Simon Moritz, a Nordic expert from Sweden, who shared his insights on data centres and their growing role in the energy sector. One of the key takeaways from the summit was the importance of exploring how artificial intelligence can help us use energy more efficiently, reduce consumption and increase productivity.
“We all have different abilities to pay for electricity. Industries can pay up to 10 times more than households and still make a profit, while some AI data centres can pay up to 1,000 times more and still remain profitable.”
– Simon Moritz,
AI Sweden, data centres, AI and energy
Svend Olling and Julie Sofie Østbjerg from the Secretariat of the Nordic Council of Ministers in Copenhagen also attended the Summit and took the opportunity to meet our team and local long-standing NGO partners – New East, the South Latgale NGO Support Centre and the association Cita Daugavpils. They also visited the Latgale regional office of Latvian Public Media (LSM.lv) and met with representatives of the independent Daugavpils media outlet Chayka.lv at our new office at the Daugavpils University, Parādes Street 1 (Room 132).
The day concluded with the opening of the Nordic exhibition “Sound's Hidden Journey under Nordic Waters” at the Rothko Museum in Daugavpils by the creative agency “Between Music”. This immersive sound art exhibition explores relationship with water through underwater sound recordings from deep Arctic lakes in Finland and fjords in Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The recordings collected over several years of fieldwork and acoustic research reveal the unique echoes and sounds of underwater environments that the human ear cannot normally hear. Four Nordic artists from Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland and Greenland have creatively interpreted these recordings by combining sound, music and animation.
The exhibition is open at the Rothko Museum (Mihaila Street 3, Daugavpils) until 29 November. Learn more.
Video recording of the Nordic-Baltic Energy Resilience Summit is available here.
