Thanks to its topography and high levels of annual rainfall, Switzerland has ideal conditions for the utilisation of hydropower. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, hydropower underwent an initial period of expansion, and between 1945 and 1970 it experienced a genuine boom during which numerous new power plants were opened in the lowlands, together with large-scale storage plants.
Based on the estimated mean production level, hydropower still accounted for almost 90% of domestic electricity production at the beginning of the 1970s, but this figure fell to around 60% by 1985 following the commissioning of Switzerland's nuclear power plants, and is now around 56%. Hydropower therefore remains Switzerland's most important domestic source of renewable energy.
Today there are 604 hydropower plants in Switzerland that each have a capacity of at least 300 kilowatts, and these produce an average of around 36,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) per annum, 47.6% of which is produced in run-of-river power plants, 48% in storage power plants and approximately 4.4% in pumped storage power plants. 63% of hydroelectricity are generated in the mountain cantons of Uri, Grisons, Ticino and Valais, while Aargau and Bern also generate significant quantities. Roughly 11% of Switzerland's hydropower generation comes from facilities situated on bodies of water along the country's borders.
The hydropower market is worth around 1.8 billion Swiss francs (basis = delivery from power plant at 5 cents per kilowatt hour), and is therefore an important segment of Switzerland's energy industry.
The federal government wants to promote the future use of hydropower to a greater extent through a variety of measures. In order to exploit the realisable potential, existing power plants are to be renovated and expanded while taking the related ecological requirements into account. An instrument to be used here include cost-covering remuneration for feed-in to the electricity grid for hydropower plants with a capacity up to 10 megawatts.
The Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE deals with policy-related aspects of hydropower (promotion, strategies, perspectives) as well as technical and safety aspects, while the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN is responsible for environmental aspects (residual water, protection of bodies of water).
Concession: This category covers both all relationships defined as such and those in which a private party has the right to use a public body of water based on an explicit authorisation granted on an individual basis by the local service with a right of disposal, even if this authorisation was referred to by another term (permit, contract, award, etc.).
Ehehaftes Wasserrecht (Legal water right): Established private right to use public property, such as public bodies of water, that is protected by the right to property (old rights to operate mills, sawmills, etc.).
Right of disposal: Forms the legal basis for a local service with a right of disposal over a body of water to use this body of water itself.
Other legal basis: This covers those cases where none of the other legal bases apply (granting the right of use to a local service by law and other special cases, private rights to private bodies of water).
November 26, 2010
March 14, 2025
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