Energy Axpo CFO: Switzerland will get through a mild winter well
Axpo CFO Harald Gauck is relatively relaxed about the cold season: "In the event of a mild winter - as we have seen twice now - we will get through it well," he said in an interview with the news agency AWP.
According to Gauck, however, the risks are a very cold winter and that more liquefied natural gas (LNG) will be sent to Asia again. In addition, the French reactors could have a problem again, as they did in the crisis year 2022.
"And if there are bottlenecks, the old flexibility from the 100 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia - around 1,000 terawatt hours per year - from before the start of the Ukraine war will be missing," said Gauck, who has been with the company since 2008 and CFO of Switzerland's largest energy group since the start of 2024.
So far, however, Europe has coped well with the loss of Russian gas. "Europe even almost has LNG overcapacity because many terminals were built quickly."
Need to think about gas-fired power plants
In the long term, however, the situation is different. Switzerland still covers its own electricity requirements throughout the year, including the long-term contracts with France. However, electricity is imported in winter and exported in summer. And the demand for electricity will increase over the next few decades: "We consume around 60 terawatt hours of electricity per year in Switzerland. However, consumption is likely to increase by 50 percent to 90 terawatt hours by 2050 because we will be using electricity to run heat pumps and e-mobility is on the rise," Gauck continued.
According to him, it is not yet clear how Switzerland will cope with the planned shutdown of nuclear power plants and at the same time cover the significantly higher additional electricity demand by 2050. And: "If we don't succeed in setting up new capacities, we will have to import more and more. And that would be reckless," says the CFO. Relying on the fact that 30 terawatt hours or even more can be imported from abroad, and mainly in winter, is not recommended.
The expansion of renewable energies must therefore be driven forward quickly, especially winter production. "Depending on how well Switzerland manages this, we will have to think about building more winter reserve power plants," says Gauck. And in the short term, only gas-fired power plants would be an option.
SDA
