Assessing the Feasibility of Scenarios for the Swiss Electricity System

The company Helion, the Swiss industry association Swissolar and National Councilor Jürg Grossen have each developed roadmaps for the Swiss electricity system up to 2050. These scenarios are characterized by a rapid and strong expansion of photovoltaics (PV) to compensate for the phase-out of nuclear energy and to cover a large part of the increasing electricity demand. In this study, we investigate the feasibility of these Roadmaps and compare them with the “Business as usual” (“Weiter Wie Bisher”, WWB) scenario of the Energy Perspectives 2050+.

For all scenarios, we test two sensitivities. We evaluate the impact of developments in neighboring countries and the impact of electricity trade restrictions, considering the potential impact of the EU clean energy package.

Reference case:
• Helion: helion
• Grossen: grossen
• Swissolar: swissolar
• WWB: wwb

Sensitivity on developments in the neighboring countries:
• Helion with Distributed Energy: helion_de
• Grossen with Distributed Energy: grossen_de
• Swissolar with Distributed Energy: swissolar_de
• WWB with Distributed Energy: wwb_de

Sensitivity on restricting electricity trading:
• Helion with reduced net transfer capacity (NTC): helion_30ntc
• Grossen with reduced NTC: grossen_30ntc
• Swissolar with reduced NTC: swissolar_30ntc
• WWB with reduced NTC: wwb_30ntc

Further information on CH2040 Project: 

• Final Project Report (PDF, 1,361 KB)

Please note the following:

– In the Interactive Results Viewer the results are available only for the Energy Topic “Future electricity system”

– The technology “Geothermal” is in the webviewer listed as “Wind Offshore” due to current limitations of the webviewer