Switzerland’s winter of 2023-2024 will be even more difficult for the country’s energy supply, Benoit Reva, director of the Federal Energy Office, told Le Temps newspaper.
“The winter of 2023-2024 will be even more difficult: access to Russian gas will become almost impossible, especially as the Chinese economy restarts. We will thus have to continue to build reserves,” Reva said (translated by TASS).
Answering the question whether Switzerland has enough energy for this winter, he said that oil reserves are designed for four months, while gas volumes will depend on imports, as the country has no gas reserves of its own. The government has therefore instructed the gas industry to buy gas from storage facilities in Germany and France.
Earlier Basler Zeitung wrote that the Swiss government has developed a plan in case of power shortages. The plan includes several stages, starting with calls for tough electricity savings, such as switching off store window lights or heaters, to rationing of electricity consumption quotas for about 30,000 large energy consumers. If those measures aren’t enough, the fourth phase of the plan calls for the possibility of blackouts in parts of the country for four to eight hours a day.
There is also a plan to save gas, the Basler Zeitung noted. It will also begin with calls for austerity to reduce gas consumption by 5 percent. The second phase would switch businesses to petroleum products instead of gas, the third would limit the temperature in public buildings and offices, and the fourth would include quotas for large consumers.