Hello and welcome to the Strawman, the daily climate newsletter that’s like the Swiss chocolate of newsletters - wildly overpriced and melts in your mouth. Wait. Wrong analogy.

Anyways… Today we’re digging in to the ongoing political battle over Switzerland’s energy future. Let’s get in to it.

An Electric Election

This weekend, the people of Switzerland go to the polls to vote on a new Climate Law.

The proposal will commit the country to carbon neutrality by 2050 and create a $2.2 Billion pool of subsidies to support the transition.

Sounds great right?

Well as things stand, it could go either way and a no would be a huge loss to climate campaigners. You see, Switzerland’s energy security is more complicated than it looks.

As a relatively small country and one of the wealthiest nations in the world, you might imagine that Switzerland’s all good when it comes to the climate.

Sure, today 2/3 of the energy comes from renewable sources (primarily nuclear and hydro). However, by 2050, demand is expected to grow by 50% and existing solutions have been exhausted.

Solar Ski Slopes

Solar and wind are the only real alternatives, and at the moment new developments are moving like newbies on the green slope - slow and fumbling at every corner.

The challenge is in the Swiss political system which is highly devolved. In other words, it’s really easy for people to block projects on a local level. As a result, it took Axpo, the biggest domestic energy player, 8 years to build five wind turbines on uninhabited mountainous land!

The government has built in some new workarounds and projects in solar and wind are finally getting off the ground. This includes a new 80,000 sq metre solar farm expected to kick off next year. Sounds massive, but this is only 1% of the additional energy supply that is expected to be needed.

Importing energy is on the table too but it’s likely to get much more difficult as Switzerland’s electricity trading treaty with the EU is ending next year. It’s likely that the EU will become a tough negotiating partner in this space, limiting the potential reliance on clean energy imports.

With almost no new development and worrying access to regional energy markets, Switzerland’s got to get comfortable with turbines in the Alps. Worry not ski-bros, we’re sure there’s plenty of slopes to go around.

The Strawman

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