The Swiss voice in the world since 1935
Top stories
Stay in touch with Switzerland

Swiss get 75% of power from renewable sources

A Swiss damn
The Muttsee reservoir in eastern Switzerland Keystone

Last year three-quarters of the electricity from Swiss sockets came from renewable sources, with 66% from large-scale hydropower plants.

Photovoltaics, wind, small-scale hydropower and biomass provided 8.4% of the nation’s power – one percentage point higher than in 2018, announced the Swiss Federal Office of Energy on Monday.

Nuclear power plants supplied 19.1% of Switzerland’s electricity in 2019, while waste incineration provided just under 2%. The rest could not be verified.

From 2020, electricity from unverifiable sources – called grey electricity – will no longer be permitted. According to the energy office, large consumers will increasingly switch to domestic nuclear energy. Last year, the share of nuclear electricity in the supply mix increased compared to 2018, when it was 17.3%. In comparison, the proportion of imported coal-fired electricity dropped from 1% to 0.5% between 2018 and 2019.

The electricity produced within Switzerland is 56.4% hydroelectric, 35.2% nuclear, 2.6% fossil fuel-generated and just under 6% from new renewable energies.

More

Popular Stories

News

E-cars account for 10.5 per cent of new registrations in the canton of Zug

More

E-cars account for 10.5% of new registrations in the canton of Zug

This content was published on Nowhere else in Switzerland are electric cars as popular as in Zug. Currently, 10.5 per cent of cars registered in the canton of Zug are purely electric, as new data from the online platform Energie Reporter and Energie Schweiz and Geoimpact show.

Read more: E-cars account for 10.5% of new registrations in the canton of Zug
ETH climate researcher honoured with the German Environmental Award

More

ETH climate researcher honoured with the German Environmental Award

This content was published on Swiss climate researcher Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne from ETH Zurich receives the German Environmental Award 2025. She shares the prize, endowed with 500,000 euros, with the management duo of the steel galvanising company Zinq.

Read more: ETH climate researcher honoured with the German Environmental Award

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR