2023-06-19 10:01:20
Albert Rösti attends, during a session in Parliament, in Bern (Switzerland), June 15, 2023. FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP
“If we want to electrify more and more things, we have to produce more electricity in Switzerland. A climate policy starts with an energy policy”said Albert Rösti, the new Swiss Minister of Energy and the Environment, a few hours after the Swiss population adopted by 59.1%, on Sunday June 18, a bill from the Federal Council (coalition government ) fixing the country’s carbon neutrality for 2050. Paradox of the Swiss system of consensus, this minister had to defend a policy in which he himself does not believe.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers In Switzerland, energy anxiety turns into a nervous breakdown
The man comes from the UDC (sovereign and europhobic), a party opposed frontally to any measure with ecological coloring, and which has many climatosceptics in its ranks. Albert Rösti was himself until the end of 2022 the main lobbyist for the oil industry. Whether his conversion is sincere or a facade, he was delighted that the Federal Council now has a “clear mandate” to conduct a policy in accordance with the Paris agreement on the fight against global warming.
But what mandate is it? The text is actually a new version, watered down, of a previous initiative, much more radical, of the pink-green left, narrowly refused (48% yes) by the Swiss, just two years ago. It proposed the outright abandonment of fossil fuels on the same date, at the risk of upsetting the population. However, none of this appears in the law which has just been validated.
Renewable energies “encouraged”
Anxious to avoid the feeling of a punitive ecology for the household budget, the authorities spared sensitivities by abandoning constraints and special taxes, to which they preferred “incentives”. The transition to low-carbon energies, produced locally, will be smooth. The text of the law provides for up to 200 million Swiss francs (about 204.5 million euros) per year for a decade, to convince property owners to swap oil heating for heat pumps. Industries that invest in innovative technologies, such as CO2 capture and storage, will be supported.
Read also the survey: Article reserved for our subscribers Solar energy, big winner of the energy transition everywhere in the world… except in France
Renewable energies will be “encouraged”, also ensures the text. The Swiss territory badly needs new production capacities, if possible on a large scale. Because, in this area, the Confederation is already lagging far behind its neighbours, because of the possibility, offered by Swiss law to local opponents, of blocking the development of any project for decades, even when they are of interest national. The country has only about thirty wind turbines, a hundred times less than neighboring Austria, whose alpine territory is comparable. The shoe pinches also for solar energy: in the high valleys of the canton of Valais, several projects of large solar parks like that of Grengiols arouse a sling of an unprecedented intensity.
You have 41.65% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
#Swiss #accept #law #aiming #carbon #neutrality