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Baselland Business 2/2022 English / Sustainability

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Business guide for the Basel-Landschaft region in German and English

Energy future Which

Energy future Which paths lead to the energy future? The energy market will change fundamentally in the next quarter century. Fossil fuels are likely to largely disappear, with renewable energies and so-called power-to-X fuels taking the lead. A look at the energy future. Daniel Schaub Fossil fuels such as oil and gas still play the leading role in Switzerland's overall energy requirements - almost 60 percent of consumption comes from these sources. This will change fundamentally by 2050, as energy expert Dr. Marc Schürch of Swiss Life Asset Managers points out. Oil is likely to have disappeared completely from the Swiss energy mix by 2050, and gas will play a barely relevant secondary role. Nuclear energy, which today covers 7.6 percent of Switzerland's total energy needs, has also disappeared from the diagram (see chart). In 2050, fossil and nuclear energy sources have been replaced by renewable electricity, renewable heat and, with over 10 percent, power-to-x technologies (for example, green hydrogen). Demand for electricity, which today accounts for just over a quarter of energy demand, will double up to almost half (44.5 percent). Which direction is the right one? So much for the prognostic facts, which will have a pleasant side effect: dependence on foreign countries, which is currently very high due to the import of gas and oil, will turn into a higher degree of supply autonomy. The question remains whether the Energy Strategy 2050 approved by the Swiss electorate in May 2017 via the adoption of the Energy Act, with the complete phase-out of nuclear energy and the net zero target for CO 2 emissions by 2050, can be implemented as planned in the remaining time, even in view of the still existing winter electricity gap in Switzerland. The phase-out of fossil energies can no longer be stopped. Due to the expected strong increase in CO 2 prices in the coming years and decades, this will not only be forced by legislation, but also by purely economic reasons. The switch to electrified mobility and to electrically supported heat pump heating systems is in full swing and is today, in terms of operating and maintenance costs, financially more 10 Baselland Business

attractive than the use of purely fossil-fueled vehicles or heating systems. Strong increase in electricity demand by 2050 Electricity demand will grow as a result of this transition. The Swiss Energy Strategy 2050 assumes an additional demand of around 42 percent - from around 60 terawatt hours (THw) of annual electricity consumption in Switzerland today, this will rise to an estimated 84 TWh in 2050. This, combined with improvements in energy efficiency - for example, by pushing improvements in the building stock or in the consumption of electric vehicles - is the starting point with which to plan today. Anyone who considers that Swiss nuclear power will then no longer contribute to electricity production does not have to have much imagination to realize that the gap will have to be covered by new forms of energy. Even if we assume - as in the model of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy - that hydropower can be expanded by almost ten percent, it is primarily renewable energies that will have to make a significant contribution to compensating for the missing power from the nuclear power plants. Of the five NPPs built between 1969 and 1984, Mühleberg was the first to be decommissioned at the end of 2019. Since then, the remaining four NPPs have been producing around 22 TWh of electricity annually. Assuming maximum operating times of 60 years, Beznau I would have to be taken off the grid in 2029, Beznau II in 2031, Gösgen in 2039 and Leibstadt in 2044. According to this plan, Switzerland would have to operate without nuclear power as of 2045. Nuclear power of the future? But in view of the current supply problems, there are more and more voices calling for openness in technology and openly demanding that nuclear power be retained. The Energy Club of Switzerland, for example, is calling for this openness in its current "Stop Blackout" initiative. And the assessment of many experts that a new nuclear power plant in Switzerland is hardly realistic from a financial and licensing point of view, in addition to the legal ban on new licenses, refers primarily to the classic nuclear power plant designs. In the meantime, however, there are initiatives worldwide of newer nuclear power plants that are more efficient, safer and also ready for operation in a shorter time. Leading the way here are the Korean supplier Kepco, the Chinese model CAP 1400, and Bill Gates' company "TerraPower" which wants to build a "low-cost, fast sodium reactor with a molten salt energy storage system" together with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy in the American town of Kemmerer, a run-down former coal town in the state of Wyoming. This pilot plant is expected to be operational and connected to the power grid by the end of this decade. The 345-megawatt plants will be cooled with liquid sodium and cost about a billion dollars each. The special feature is that the neutron reactor will be cooled with sodium rather than water. Linked to this is the idea of being able to virtually recycle nuclear waste with running wave and liquid salt reactors. According to TerraPower, the world's buried nuclear waste still contains enough energy to supply most of humanity with electricity for a millennium. Large-scale specialist study Wherever the journey to the energy future will take us, this is currently the subject of numerous experts in Switzerland. The Association of Swiss Electricity Companies (VSE) is currently working on the comprehensive study «Energy Future 2050 - Paths to the Energy and Climate Future", which is to be presented at the end of this year. With this industry project, the VSE is simulating Switzerland's overall energy system up to the year 2050, based on comprehensive, building- and hour-specific modeling of 1.8 million buildings by the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (Empa). Based on this, realistic paths to the energy future are to be outlined, for example a substantial expansion of photovoltaics or greater use of imported electricity from the EU region. www.strom.ch/de/energiezukunft-2050/startseite Baselland Business 11

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