Nordic-Baltic Hydrogen Corridor: EIA Programme Issued After Latvia's First Round of Public Consultation
On 9 October 2026 the State Environmental Service issued the environmental impact assessment programme for the Nordic-Baltic Hydrogen Corridor in Latvia, closing a consultation that drew around 500 participants across ten municipalities. We look at how the process unfolded, who showed up, what residents asked, and what Conexus Baltic Grid now has to deliver.
NEWS
HydrogenLatvia
10/16/20264 min read
On 9 October the State Environmental Service (VVD) signed off the programme for the environmental impact assessment of the Nordic-Baltic Hydrogen Corridor in Latvia. Nobody held a press conference for it. It's a scoping document, and most people will never open it. But it closes the first public chapter of the biggest hydrogen project this country has seen, and it tells AS Conexus Baltic Grid exactly what its impact report has to prove before anyone talks about a route. We spent the past week reading it, together with the 172-page consultation file behind it. This is the opener. The next articles take the ten municipalities one at a time, because what people said in Krimulda is not what they said in Valka.
Six months, start to finish
Conexus filed on 2 April. On 17 April the VVD ruled that a full EIA was mandatory and, since Estonia and Lithuania are affected, that it would also run under the Espoo Convention. The public notice went into five regional papers on 28 July. From then until 1 September anyone could send in written proposals, and between 10 and 20 August there was a meeting in every one of the ten municipalities, in the hall and online. Conexus asked for the programme on 19 August, handed in the consultation file on 21 September, and the VVD issued the programme on 9 October. It's valid until October 2031.
One thing to be clear about, because it gets mixed up a lot: the programme is not a permit. It's the list of studies, calculations and consultations the impact report must contain. What people raised in August has been written into that list, and that's the whole point of the exercise.
Who came
The programme records attendance for each meeting, in the hall and online. Here's the whole thing:
Krimulda (Sigulda municipality): 65 in the hall, 34 online. Nothing else came close.
Bauska: 40 and 29.
Sēja (Saulkrasti municipality): 31 and 23.
Daugmale (Ķekava): 22 and 33.
Ulbroka (Ropaži): 23 and 27.
Valmiera: 18 and 30.
Cēsis: 21 and 21.
Salaspils: 18 and 21.
Rauna (Smiltene): 14 and 18.
Valka: 5 in the hall, 10 online.
Roughly 257 people in person and 246 online, so about 500 over two weeks in August, holiday season. Letters had gone out to the owners of 1,773 land parcels in the study corridor and to anyone within 300 metres of it. In writing, the VVD got more than 25 individual submissions, two collective ones with over 30 signatures between them, and opinions from several institutions. Estonia's Climate Ministry answered on 25 August, Lithuania's Environment Ministry on 7 September. Both are in as affected states.
You can read the pattern off the list. Krimulda and Sēja sit where the existing gas line runs through the most built-up part of Pierīga. Bauska is where the pipe crosses into Lithuania. Those were the full rooms. Valka, where the line follows open country to the Estonian border, barely filled a table.
What people actually asked
The VVD boils the public's concerns down to a single long sentence, and it was the same sentence in nearly every hall. Is it safe. How wide will the protective zone be, and what can't we do inside it. Why does Latvia have no regulation for hydrogen transmission yet. What happens to my business, to the access road to my property. And how much of this is going to be copied from countries that have already built one.
None of that got filed away. The report now has to work out the operational and safety zone on every affected property, assess what the restrictions do to existing and planned business there, run a quantitative risk assessment with safety distances for fire and explosion scenarios, and carry a separate Natura 2000 assessment for the Gauja National Park and Ziemeļgauja. We'll go through each of these in the regional pieces, with the protocols open.
What's next
Conexus and its consultant now write the impact report. It has to deal with every comment from the initial consultation and say what was done with it. Then it goes to the Nature Conservation Agency, the Health Inspectorate and all ten municipalities for written proposals, after that to a second, full public consultation of the report itself, and in parallel to Estonia and Lithuania. The VVD has also written in a condition: if the route or the Estonian crossing point shifts, affected landowners get notified again individually, and if needed the initial consultation is rerun in that municipality.
Beyond the EIA, Conexus has said the detailed study phase runs to 2027, construction could start around 2029, and the six-country corridor is aimed at commercial operation from 2033. Those are the partners' dates, and they'll move with the assessment.
Why this is worth the ecosystem's attention
As far as we know, no hydrogen transmission pipeline has been through a full Latvian EIA before. However the safety-zone question gets settled here, it's going to be the reference for everything that comes after, from port electrolysers to the first industrial offtaker. And the 500 people who turned up in August are the ones settling it, whether they think of it that way or not. Next article: Krimulda, where the room was fullest.