The cost of not transitioning

The Swiss Energy Foundation has published a report on what not transitioning to renewables and lower consumption will cost and finds that Switzerland cannot afford not to transition.

After German Environmental Minister Peter Altmaier put the price tag of his country's Energiewende at a trillion euros, environmental think tank Green Budget Germany looked into what not pursuing the energy transition would cost and found that option to be even more expensive.

Now, Switzerland's Energy Foundation has produced a study (PDF in German) entitled “Cost of the (non-) Energiewende" investigating whether it would pay for the Swiss to transition as well. Like Germany, Switzerland is pursuing a nuclear phaseout, but unlike the Germans the Swiss have a lot of hydropower, not all of which has been tapped.

Essentially, the Energy Foundation reaches similar conclusions as the Germans have. Primarily, transitioning to renewables will prove to be a less expensive option no later than 2040, and that date could be pulled forward significantly if prices for conventional energy increase faster than assumed in the scenarios. For instance, the "high price scenario" is based on a barrel of crude oil costing 210 US dollars, only around 50 percent more than the record price set a few years ago.

Furthermore, more "sufficiency" would make the transition to pay for itself even faster. As I recently wrote, the French speak of "sobriété," which one French expert translates into English as "sufficiency" – and the Swiss use the German word "Suffizienz." Essentially, I still believe that efficiency and conservation is a good translation of the word, but the term also includes a change in behavior. For instance, the Swiss study proposes that people reduce room temperatures by 0.5 degrees Celsius, and the number of kilometers the average person travels would remain constant at the level of 2010.

Finally, an energy transition would reportedly make Switzerland less dependent on energy imports. Overall, the findings are very much in line with what one reads from Germany, where most experts believe that the cost of the energy transition is peaking right now, will begin to taper off by the end of this decade, and eventually become the less expensive options for good sometime around 2030. (Craig Morris)