Accounting as it does for around 60 percent of Swiss electricity production, hydroelectricity is the most important domestic primary source of energy. Hydroelectricity plants (run-of-river and storage power plants) make an important contribution to energy security.
Storage power plants characterise the special quality of Swiss electricity production. Thanks to reservoirs, much of the electricity generated can be used in a highly flexible manner and delivered on demand as peak load energy. Because storage power plants also produce balance and control energy, they provide a reliable backup whenever facilities such as wind and solar power plants, which produce electricity only intermittently, are idle. Storage power plants also guarantee grid stability.
With its Electricity Supply Act and the revised Energy Act, the Swiss parliament has delivered a package for promoting electricity production from renewable energies. Production of renewable energies is to be increased by 5400 GWh between now and 2030. Hydro power will play a particularly important role in the bid to reach this target, with production capacity to be increased by 2000 GWh. Hydro power will be promoted, expanded and sustainably retained as the keystone of domestic, renewable electricity production.
Since the introduction of residual water regulations will reduce hydro power production by around 2000 GWh, an increase in hydro power production capacity of 4000 GWh needs to be planned in order to achieve the targets defined in the Energy Act. Climate change is also impacting hydro power. The legal framework for hydro power must therefore be designed so as to compensate for these production constraints.
The "Renewable Energies" action plan for implementation of the Energy Act, presented by DETEC in February 2008, calls for optimisation of the Water Protection Law (GSchG) "to expand the use of hydro power and sustainably exploit the existing potential of hydro power. The aim of reforming the GSchG is to ensure regulations that differentiate the cost of solutions for minimum flow figures according to individual hydroelectric plants." To protect investments and ensure international competitiveness, the "Renewable Energies" action plan aims to introduce remedial structural measures to address the negative impact of hydropeaking, with the emphasis on exploiting synergies with flood protection schemes.
In March 2008, DETEC published its "Strategy on the use of hydro power", commissioned by the Federal Council. The strategy states that "the discussion on the future of energy in Switzerland will be more strongly focused on hydroelectricity as the most important domestic source of renewable energy, and as such the least reliant on raw material imports. The more intensively hydro power is utilised, the less need there will be to resort to other energy sources fraught with problems and uncertainty."
