The industry supports the Federal Council's four-pillar strategy for energy policy. The aim is to provide a broadly diversified, cost-effective energy mix of new renewable energies.
Parliament also has high hopes of renewable energies and, in the Energy Act revised in 2007, set out the ambitious goal of increasing the share of renewables to 5.4 TWh by 2030. This corresponds to virtually the entire production volume of the two nuclear power plants Beznau I and II, which along with Mühleberg nuclear power plant are scheduled to be disconnected from the grid as from 2020. Up to then, the entire additional requirement for electricity will amount to around 30 TWh.
Parliament decided to support efforts to reach this target among other things by introducing a cost-covering feed-in tariff (FIT) which would bring in more than CHF 300 million a year and from which new renewable energies and small hydroelectric plants would benefit. The FIT is paid by all electricity customers by levying a maximum charge of 0.6 cents per kWh on the transmission grid. Currently the charge is 0.45 cents per kWh. Parliament approved an increase in the FIT to 0.9 cents, as of 2010.
The industry faces the challenge of further developing renewable technologies and their contribution to national electricity supplies and is convinced that the goals enshrined in the Energy Act can be achieved. But this will only happen if the FIT benefits technologies which generate the most revenue per incentive-franc. Moreover, the permit procedures must be simplified. Yet this also means that interfering with the environment is unavoidable in order to increase the number of renewable energy facilities such as wind farms and small hydroelectric plants until they reach critical mass. Moreover, care thould be taken to ensure that, as a mandatory tax, the FIT is used exclusively to achieve the energy policy objectives. Finally, additional efforts are required in the field of research, development and pilot plants.
The industry's guiding principles for the promotion of new renewable energies are as follows:
Development of an economically and ecologically optimal share to meet electricity requirements within the framework of implementing the political objectives while taking into account a rise in the cost of domestic electricity; Decarbonisation of energy supplies; Achieve the 5.4 TWh target with new renewable energies by 2030 through the optimised incentive schemes (FIT) as defined by the EnG; Large power plants to fill the residual gap between supply and demand; Broadly diversified production; Promote production rather than technology; competively-geared electricity market while retaining the green electricity market; simple, transparent, rapid procedure for issuing subsidies; Retention of contributions to R&D carried out by universities and industry.
