Bas Eickhout, candidate for the presidency of the European Fee for the GreensEuropean Free Alliance’s social gathering, speaks to the press on the European Parliament in Brussels as a part of European Parliament elections on June 9, 2024. (Picture by Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD / AFP)
GENEVA — Switzerland authorized a regulation on Sunday geared toward accelerating the event of renewable energies, as a part of the nation’s bid to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Official outcomes confirmed that just below 69 p.c of Swiss voters backed the regulation on “a safe electrical energy provide primarily based on renewable energies”, confirming polling tendencies printed earlier than the nationwide referendum.
“The Swiss folks have taken an essential resolution about our electrical energy provide,” stated the Alliance For a Protected and Inexpensive Electrical energy Provide, which backed the regulation.
Lower than two months in the past, Switzerland turned the primary nation ever to be condemned by a global courtroom for not doing sufficient to fight local weather change, in a ruling by the European Court docket of Human Rights.
The renewables regulation was authorized by parliament final yr, and most environmental organizations again the laws and its ambitions.
They embrace heavyweights Greenpeace and WWF.
Reacting to the referendum end result, Greenpeace stated it meant nuclear was now “out of date” and urged Swiss vitality group Axpo to “set a deadline for the swift and definitive halt of the 2 reactors and the Beznau nuclear plant”.
READ: Swiss area rejects plan to fast-track photo voltaic parks on Alpine mountainsides
“They’re among the many oldest reactors nonetheless lively on the planet and pose an insoluble safety threat,” it stated.
Surroundings and Power Minister Albert Rosti stated the regulation was “an essential milestone for strengthening the safety of provide” in Switzerland, notably in winter.
Onerous-right opposition
It goals to spice up wind and solar energy’s present minuscule contribution to Switzerland’s vitality combine and quickly improve hydro manufacturing so the rich landlocked nation is much less depending on imported electrical energy.
The regulation envisages putting in photo voltaic panels on constructing roofs and facades.
It additionally eases planning permission for wind generators and huge photo voltaic installations.
Critics, together with just a few smaller environmental teams, argue the regulation will fast-track large-scale vitality initiatives and see Switzerland’s pristine Alpine landscapes plastered with wind generators and photo voltaic panels.
Additionally they say locals can have solely restricted potentialities to attraction towards the development of recent renewable vitality installations.
Switzerland’s largest social gathering, the hard-right Swiss Folks’s Occasion (SVP), additionally opposed the regulation, above all within the identify of defending civil nuclear energy, which supplied 32 p.c of whole vitality manufacturing final yr.
After the vote it complained the regulation would supply Swiss folks with “little electrical energy, at a excessive worth” and lead to “huge environmental destruction”.
The federal government acknowledged that courtroom appeals towards giant vitality initiatives “will most likely be much less prone to succeed than earlier than”.
Well being initiatives spurned
But it surely stated initiatives can be examined on a case-by-case foundation and developing giant installations in “biotopes of nationwide significance” and migratory fowl reservations will stay banned, albeit with some exceptions.
The regulation foresees 16 hydroelectric initiatives, a sector which final yr represented 57 p.c of home energy technology. These contain constructing new dams or heightening current ones.
Underneath Switzerland’s direct democracy system, residents can set off votes on matters by accumulating 100,000 legitimate signatures inside 18 months. Voting takes place each three months.
There have been additionally ballots on Sunday on three health-related matters, all of which had been rejected.
Voters threw out a proposal to cap well being contributions at 10 p.c of revenue and a bid to restrict well being prices.
Additionally they spurned an initiative tabled by opponents of measures launched to stem the unfold of COVID-19.
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Though it didn’t particularly point out vaccines, the proposal stated individuals who refused to present consent for sure medical procedures shouldn’t be penalized.
