Hydroelectric power plant in canton Valais, Switzerland
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland’s production of energy from renewable sources rose in 2010, new figures from the Federal Energy Office 30 June show.
Electricity from renewable sources, including hydroelectric power (without accumulation pumps consumption), rose by 1.2 percent for a total of 36.4 billion kWh.
Nuclear power plants currently provide 39.3 percent of the country’s energy, hydroelectric and dams 55.8 percent (TSR has several charts on Swiss energy).
Nuclear power is being phased out after the government voted last month to end it use.
Muehleberg peaceful anti-nuclear protest in May (©2011 Herbi Ditl, flickr.com/photos/herbivore)
Update 2 19:20 BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss ruling seven-member Federal Council Wednesday afternoon voted to end the country’s nuclear energy programme by 2034. The decision requires approval by Parliament.
Five existing nuclear power stations will be closed as their licenses, which will not be renewed, come to an end.
Europe finalizes nuclear station “stress tests”
The European Union, also Wednesday afternoon, put the finishing touches on its stress tests programme for nuclear facilities, to test their ability to withstand terrorist attacks and natural disasters. “The tests, which follow two months of wrangling, will also address resilience to more common threats such as forest fires, transport accidents and the loss of electrical power supplies,” reports The Guardian in the UK. Tests must begin by 1 June.
Switzerland’s Federal Council, in setting out its new 2050 energy strategy, will look to guarantee that the country’s energy needs are met through a combination of:
- greater economies through more efficient use of energy supplies
- developing hydraulic power and renewable energy supplies
- as needed, producing combustible gas for electricity
- imports.
The government has noted the urgent need to rapidly develop electricity networks and to increase energy research.
The WWF promptly issued a statement congratulating the government on its decision but noting that the parliament could take this a step further when it votes 8 June, in particular in setting an earlier date of 2029 to end the nuclear programme, pointing out that several environmental groups recommended this to the government in early May, outlining their reasons.
The council said Wednesday afternoon in its statement that it sees no reason to advance the date, and that recent checks on the safety of the plants shows they are very secure. The plants have a 50 year life and will come to the end of their terms in 2019, for Beznau, 2022 for Beznau II and Mueleberg , 2029 for Goesgen and 2034 for Leibstadt.
Federal Council will consult on plan for how big banks can fail, negotiate withholding tax on foreigners’ accounts
Measles, tougher penal sentences, electricity suppliers, corporate tax rates all on the 2011 schedule
Swiss Federal Council (cabinet): government publishes its 2011 agenda
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Government, fresh from the defeat of its counter-initiative in the vote on foreign convicts 28 November, has set out an ambitious agenda for work it expects to complete in 2011. This will be the final session before a new parliament is elected 23 October 2011.
Two pieces of legislation, one calling for a tougher penal code and the other for greater efforts to integrate foreigners into Swiss society, were planned before the weekend vote, but they must now be coordinated with a constitutional change, the results of the 28 November popular initiative, where Swiss voters chose automatic expulsion of foreign convicts.
Negotiations over undeclared assets in Swiss banks confirmed
The council confirmed Tuesday that negotiations are already underway with some countries, and it intends to open negotiations with other key countries, to “regularize” undeclared assets coming to Swiss banks from outside Switzerland. The main tool Switzerland intends to use is a withholding tax but the government says the negotiations will also include a commitment by the Swiss to “ensure, as far as possible, that undeclared assets from [countries with negotiations] will not in future come to Switzerland”.
Bankruptcy proceedings for key banks would limit pay, free trade agreements get priority
The cabinet will consult with interested parties on the details of how banks that are critical to the national financial system would be allowed to move into bankruptcy if they fail. A particular aspect of this is the decision by the government to limit payment to bankers for any financial institution that comes under the government’s care. Wide consultation on drafts for new laws with major impact is standard procedure in Switzerland and proposed legislation is then revised based on feedback before it goes to parliament.
Trade talks to be accelerated
Public referendum in 2013 likely
The French and Swiss power grids: multiple electricity sources include nuclear power
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Three requests to build new nuclear power stations, on the site of existing ones, have passed their first hurdle, with the Federal Nuclear Safety Commission saying the sites meet legal and other requirements. The commission will now study the applications, the first in a series of approval stages that is expected to take three years. The three sites are in Muehleberg, canton Bern, Goesgen, canton Solothurn and Beznau, Aargau. The requests to build were filed by Forces motrices bernoises (FMB) for Muehleberg, Axpo for Beznau and Alpiq for Goesgen.
The commission has asked the three project owners to supply more information, in particular details concerning earthquake, landslide and flooding risks, as well as the financial profitability of the operations.
Mathematical invention part of the future shrinking of our electronic devices
EPFL infograph, Pascal Coderey, 2010
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL is boasting its 1,000th invention 3 November, with the official arrival of Kandou, a new system based on mathematics whose daunting task is to try to reduce the world’s computer electricity consumption, currently 150 billion kWh per year, which translates into a monthly bill of several billion dollars. The university is boldly predicting that Kandou “could equip most of our electronic systems within a few years.”
Kandou is the 1,000th invention to arrive in the university’s Service of Industrial Relations. It was invented by Harm Cronie and Amin Shokrollahi of the EPFL algorithm laboratory and in a nutshell “enables processors to communicate more rapidly—while using less energy—with their peripherals”: memory, printers, monitors, an EPFL press release notes. The system has already sparked strong interest from large companies in the computer field, it adds.
Most electronic appliances today use ultra-rapid processors that communicate with other processors or other peripherals by using electronic buses, a kind of information highways.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - ‘Tis the season for electricity companies to tell us what we should budget for electricity for the next year, and the answer throughout Switzerland is: the price is rising.
ElCom, the Swiss Federal Electricity Commission, announced 7 September that on average Swiss households (family in a 5-room apartment, annual consumption 4,500 kWh) will pay 2o.2 kWh (kilowatt hours), a 2 percent increase, while small companies can expect a 3-4 percent increase for an average price of 19.7 kWh. French-speaking Switzerland generally has higher electricity costs than northern Switzerland.
Seventy-five percent of electricity companies have raised their prices, 20 percent have reduced them slightly and for 5 percent, there is no change.
The country’s 450 electricity suppliers had until the end of August to announce their 2011 rates to the government. The main reason for the increase is a 5-8 percent rise in the cost of raw electricity, says ElCom.
Swissgrid, the association of electricity suppliers, in May 2010 announced a price increase of 8 percent across the board, but the federal electricity commission intervened to temporarily freeze the prices of suppliers for 2011, saying they appeared to be unjustified. Swissgrid said at the time that “the main reason for the rate increase is that a considerably larger proportion of auction revenues for the long-term reliability of supply are to be used for essential investments in the transmission system than in the prior year – and less will be used for a short-term reduction in tariffs.” Swissgrid was created in 2007 to liberalize the Swiss electricity market.
Check out your rate increase and the explanation for it, compare with 2010 rates
ElCom in 2009 set up an online consultation site that lets consumers check prices in their communes for a variety of types of homes and businesses, compare these to villages and towns throughout Switzerland and see the breakdown of costs for the rates for each town.
Hydroelectric station, canton Valais, Switzerland
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Electricity price increases announced in 2009 by several suppliers were provisionally rejected in July 2009 by Bern as unnecessarily high, and Monday 8 March the federal electricity commission confirmed this. The commission’s report says that the increases were based on costs that were over-estimated in some cases and unacceptable inefficiency in other cases. The energy companies have the right to appeal, but if they do not the rate hikes will have to be abandoned.
The companies concerned are: Alpiq, BKW, Axpo (Axpo AG, CKW, EGL), EWZ and Rätia Energie, along with a number of smaller firms.
Wind turbine, Switzerland
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Canton Vaud will have 10 additional wind turbines on a third site, by 2014, Romande Energie announced Friday 5 March. The communes of Longirod and Marchissy, at the foot of the Jura, have agreed to their construction, as have the landowners. The wind energy produced by the mills will supply electricity to some 10,000 households. The cost to build them: CHF60 million.
Romande Energie has set a target to have 10 percent of its energy coming from renewable sources by 2020-2025, the company notes.
Links to other sites: Longirod, Romande Energy, Swiss federal department of energy on wind energy
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A major power outage caused by a malfunction at an electric station in Romanel affected much of the Lausanne area Monday evening: the M1, M2 and TL city public transport lines were down and 70 percent of the city is reported to have been without electricity, but details are sketchy at this point (22:00). Police are overwhelmed by phone calls from people trapped in elevators, according to TSR. The power cut appears to have affected Montreux and Neuchatel as well as Lausanne.
Links to other sites: TSR (Fre), 24 Heures (Fre), Lausanne’s electricity, provided by the Services Industriels (Fre)
Coal plant, northern Germany (©2010 Andrew Kerr and WWF-Canon)
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - WWF Switzerland has filed a complaint with the European Union over the continuing support by some Swiss electricity companies of coal-based electricity production in northern Germany. Romande Energie is among several Swiss electricity suppliers who participate in the coal-based activities at Brunsbuettel in northern Germany.
Discreet Swiss hotel windows are sometimes a good minibar substitute
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The 55,000 mini-bars in Swiss hotels consume far more energy than the average home refrigerator for a family of four, some 24 million kW hours in a year. The heart of the problem is the sad news for hotel clients who love drinks in their rooms that a 40-litre minibar consumes 0.9 kW/h versus the 0.24 that a 150-litre refrigerator uses.
Power has been restored to much of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil after the two cities experienced four hours of electrical blackout. The power outage, apparently caused by transmission problems at a hydroelectrical station at the Itaipu dam, also briefly affected neighbouring Paraguay and, for longer, nine of Brazil’s 27 states. MCNBC reports that the dam is the world’s second largest, after China’s Three Gorges dam. The blackout is raising concerns about the country’s management of its electricity infrastructure, with recent accusations that earlier accusations that smaller blackouts have been caused by hackers, and with worries that power problems could be a problem in the runup to the 2016 Olympic Games.
Links to other sites: BrazzilMag, MSNBC, Shanghai Daily
Cyclones, floods, tsunamis in Asia, and late today it’s an earthquake in Indonesia that may have killed hundreds of people, the government there says of the most recent disaster to strike. Sumatra was hit by a 7.6 earthquake centred 50 km off its coast, and 75 people are known to have died but hundreds are trapped under rubble. Flights to Padang have been canceled and the electricity and most telecommunications are out in the area, increasing the difficulty of rescue work. BBC, Guardian, UK, Jakarta Post
Swiss windmill, Valais
Morges, Vaud and Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Romande Energie, which serves electricity to much of French-speaking Switzerland and ewz, the energy company of the city of Zurich, are joining force to create a consortium that will build the country’s largest wind generating station if the project is approved. The two groups presented their plans Wednesday morning 17 June, for a project to build windmills in three Vaud villages in the Jura, Provence, Romairon, Fantanezier and the village of Val-de-Travers in canton Neuchatel.
Electrical station, Geneva
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The federal government is starting what it refers to as a close scrutiny of the proposed electricity price hikes, 26 percent higher than rates set by the Federal Energy Commision, announced in May by national electricity carrier swissgrid.
Valais, Swiss hydroelectric power
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A strong GDP (gross domestic product), larger population and leap year all contributed to a 2.3 percent increase in energy consumption in Switzerland in 2008, the federal government says. The 58.7 billion kilowatt hours set a record for annual consumption. Electricity production also set a record, up 1.6 percent, but it was unable to keep pace with consumption and Swiss electricity exports to neighbouring countries in summer were nearly halved. In winter, when Switzerland imports some electricity, the amount needed rose.
Etoy, Vaud, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) – A command station in Etoy Wednesday morning at 10:00 set off a 15-minute electricity cut in the Aubonne-Morges area, followed by a second power outage in the same area shortly after 11:00.
Updated 3 October, 09:00
Bern, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Electricity prices will be going up rapidly in the wake of the Swiss market being opened early in 2009 and, according to TSR, they could double within five years.
