Risk assessment in renewable energy production from agriculture biomass in Latvia

The concepts "risk", "crisis", "danger" have become commonly used and recognised in various fields of entrepreneurship, governance, agriculture and environment protection. Risk management and risk evaluation nowadays has not only theoretical, but also practical application. Risk assessment is an important factor for successful and sustainable entrepreneurship of bioenergy production, which has become one of the priorities in the energy sector of Latvia — promotion of the use of renewable energy is included as one of the strategic goals for both European Union (EU) and Latvia. The present research focuses on risk assessment and choice of risk management alternatives in renewable energy production form agriculture biomass, since this type of energy is viewed as a perspective source for renewable energy production in Latvia. This field of energy production in Latvia is rather new and scantily explored, and therefore there are many risk factors that arise in different stages of energy production, starting with planning and building of a bioreactor and ending with production and further use and distribution of energy. A risk assessment module for renewable energy production made using Analytic Network Process (ANP) software is described in the paper.