Alpiq chief urges decision as Switzerland’s hydropower expansion stalls

Alpiq CEO Antje Kanngiesser says Switzerland must decide how to balance its need for water and electricity with environmental protection as hydropower expansion remains stalled, SRF reported.

A hot and dry summer has reduced electricity production in Switzerland, particularly from hydropower plants. In the long term, however, hydropower is expected to produce more electricity.

Five years ago, authorities, energy providers and environmental groups agreed on 16 projects at a round table. Their implementation has made little progress.

Kanngiesser said this year’s combination of a snow-poor winter and dry summer had created an unusually severe situation. There was much less water available, while the heat had also accelerated glacier melting.

She said more water was melting than could be held back in reservoirs because expansion projects had not advanced in recent years and dams could not be raised.

The federal government is now seeking additional projects. Environmental groups fear that commitments made at the round table, including protection of residual water levels and biotopes, could come under pressure.

Kanngiesser said infrastructure always affects the environment, but argued that Switzerland also needed water for energy, irrigation and drinking supplies. She said the country would have to consider whether it was more important to avoid water shortages or to protect individual plants and species.

She said this did not mean environmental concerns were less important, but that a compromise would have to be reconsidered jointly. “We have to make some decision,” she said.

On nuclear power, Kanngiesser said extending the operating lives of existing nuclear plants was more important to her than building new ones. She said this was what Switzerland needed to maintain a high degree of domestic energy supply.

She acknowledged that there was no certainty that existing nuclear plants could operate for 80 years. Safety, she said, remained the most important consideration, and a plant could not continue operating if changes in the nuclear energy sector called its safety into question.