SWISS ENERGY POLICY: ACHIEVEMENTS, OUTLOOK AND ROLE OF HEAT PUMPING TECHNOLOGIES
The Swiss energy policy became a new impulse on January 2007. The government decided to focus on 4 pillars: • Higher efficiency • Increase use of renewable energies • Build new power plants if necessary • More foreign policy, especially with the EU 2008 is an important year: the tax on CO2 was introduced on combustibles and the new federal electricity supply act entered in force on the 1st of January. The electricity market will be progressively opened to consumers, step by step. It introduces also the cost-covering remuneration for the input into the network of electricity produced from renewable energy sources. An annual sum of around 320 million Swiss francs has been budgeted for this purpose. The goals for 2020 are set: share of renewable energies should be increased of 50%, the consumption of fossil energies should be reduced of 20% and the electricity consumption should not increase more than 5%. Heat pumps in the heating sector will play a key role among the renewables. The development of the past 15 years under the umbrella of the program SwissEnergy of the federal office of energy will be continued. The potential of heat pumps is a reduction of the fossil energy consumption – and also CO2 - of 10% by 2020.