Behind the SCENE: Evangelos Panos, Naima Chabouni, and Fabian Dvorak on flexible low-carbon energy systems

SCENE (Swiss Center of Excellence on Net-Zero Emissions) is a Joint Initiative, co-financed by the ETH Board. The four research institutes of the ETH Domain, PSI, Empa, WSL & Eawag, as well as ETH Zurich & EPFL are involved. SCENE covers a wide range of research areas related to the goal of net-zero emissions and provides a network for cross-institutional collaboration.

Evangelos Panos is the head of PSI’s Energy Economics Group at the Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis of PSI Centers for Nuclear Engineering and Sciences & Energy and Environmental Sciences and the leader of the SCENE Flexible Low-Carbon Energy Systems Action Area.

Naima Chabouni is a postdoctoral researcher at PSI’s Energy Economics Group at the Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis of the PSI Centers for Nuclear Engineering and Sciences & Energy and Environmental Sciences

Fabian Dvorak is a scientist at Eawag’s Environmental Social Sciences Department.

These researchers are involved in the Flexible Low-Carbon Energy Systems Action Area in the SCENE Project.

“Did you know that by 2050, the new Swiss electricity law mandates producing 9 times more energy from solar and wind than we have today?”

  • “Today” refers to the year 2023 because the official electricity statistics for 2024 were not yet published at the time of filming the video.
  • The quantity of renewable electricity from solar and wind, produced in 2023 in Switzerland, can be found in Table 4 on page 5 here: 4624 + 169 = 4793 ≈ 5 TWh (5000 GWh)
  • In the “Bundesgesetz über eine sichere Stromversorgung mit erneuerbaren Energien vom 29. September 2023,” the target production level of renewable electricity (not including hydropower) for the year 2050 is 45 TWh (45,000 GWh).
  • The amount, 45 TWh (45,000 GWh), is an approximation of the “ZERO A” EP2050+ scenario. The electricity sources in the “ZERO A” scenario can be viewed here (zip file, Excel file: “EP2050+_Umwandlungssynthese_2020-2060_ZERO-A_KKW50_ausgeglicheneJahresbilanz_2022-04-12”, Excel tab: “02 Stromerzeugung”, Table 02-02, reproduced below).
    Here, the 43 TWh are comprised of Solar (“Photovoltaik”) and Wind (“Windenergie”). The quantities of other renewable energy sources are listed below solar and wind in small quantities. The bioenergy use for electricity production (wood and wastes) is not scaled up significantly from today, and the other non-hydro renewable electricity is mostly geothermal, with its known uncertainties and challenges (seismic activity and suitable geological formations).
  • Therefore: 45,000 GWh / 5 GWh ≈ 9
    We will need about 9 times more solar and wind electricity.

Swiss TIMES Energy Systems Model (STEM): https://www.psi.ch/en/eem/swiss-times-energy-systems-model-stem

Graphic of the 7 regions of Switzerland: ‘Grossregionen der Schweiz’ by Tschubby available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karte_Grossregionen_der_Schweiz_2018.png
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0

SCENE (Swiss Center of Excellence on Net-Zero Emissions): https://www.scene-project.ch/
ETH Board Joint Initiatives: https://ethrat.ch/en/eth-domain/joint-initiatives/
PSI Center for Nuclear Engineering and Sciences: https://www.psi.ch/en/nes
PSI Center for Energy and Environmental Sciences: https://www.psi.ch/en/cee
PSI’s Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis: https://www.psi.ch/en/lea
PSI’s Energy Economics Group: https://www.psi.ch/en/eem
Eawag’s Department Environmental Social Sciences: https://www.eawag.ch/en/department/ess/
SCENE’s Flexible Low-Carbon Energy Systems Action Area: https://www.scene-project.ch/action-areas/flexible-low-carbon-energy-systems/