Swiss and Austrians are an exception with the hydro and should stop rubbing it in all the discussions. In Slovakia much of whatever could be dammed already is and still hydro makes only up to 20% of the mix, despite being one of the more hilly countries. Were it not for 70% nuclear, I have no idea how to even go near carbon neutral electricity. Having German electricity prices to pay for renewables is completely impossible.

Agreed. I was answering the inaccurate sentence "your electricity is much more polluted than France's is."

>exception with the hydro and should stop rubbing it in all the discussions.

True, and it's not a exception, but geographically "luck", without mountains and the glaciers that comes with them, Switzerland would be as dry as Turkmenistan. It's just a matter of commonsense to use those altitude differences and water....but when all our glaciers are molten away, we for sure have to go back to nuclear-power.

agreed. we are doing hydro because of mountains AND lack of coal.

> but when all our glaciers are molten away, we for sure have to go back to nuclear-power.

this is inaccurate. you might want to go read more literature related to ice melting and energy transition.

No snow = no glaciers grow = not water in our alps, it's not that hard to understand:

https://www.thelocal.ch/20170217/swiss-study-snow-to-largely...

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2018/02/no-...

>In an initial phase, climate change will actually cause the runoff to increase, as water stored as ice is released. However, if the glacier becomes too small, it will reach a tipping point, which we call “peak water”.

>Our study highlights the “hot spots” where retreating glaciers will cause water shortages in future.

But hey maybe you know some other mysterious ways water is stored in in mountains.

Lakes?

Sorry to tell you but there are not many lakes in the Maintains, and they are often fed through snow and water-sources from glaciers/snow-fields, from higher above. And there is not a single lake in the mountains with nearly the size/mass of a single glacier.

Ignoring storage, wind and solar are now very cheap. For example, companies now pay to rent pieces of North Sea to place wind parks there.

Pumped water storage also isnt that expensive.

Pumped water storage is unsurprisingly limited by the same factors as hydro - there aren't that many steep mountains suitable to put lakes on top in most places.

Storage and transmission.

Wind and solar need a lot of resources from mining, which itself uses fossil fuel (for extraction, treatment and transport) and creates a lot of local pollution.

Wind and solar take a lot of space that could be used for agriculture, so they compete with important uses of the soil. (I don't know if it's clear how much offshore is a thing, but I suppose this increases also energy expenditure)

If we look at CO2, which is far from the only metric, but the easiest to compare, then solar panels make up for their production in a period on months and for wind it is a period of years.

Both solar and wind provide a significant net reduction of CO2 when you take into account their production. Long term, materials in solar and wind can be re-used. So you would need to mine them only once. Currently, mining is just too cheap to effectively recycle all metals.

Wind doesn't takes hardly any space. Wind is not compatible with airfields and residential areas, but that's about it. Wind mixes perfectly fine with argiculture.

Due to you people complaining about wind in their neighborhood, there is now a lot of wind at sea. The good thing about offshore wind is that typically there is more wind at sea. So the construction cost is higher, but the production is higher as well.

For solar it is more an issue of price. Putting solar on a field is cheap. To some extent putting solar on a field is good for nature. An undisturbed area with shadow is quite nice for small plants, insects, etc.

The potential for solar in urban areas is enormous, but often not cheap. For example, existing roofs of large building are not strong enough for lots of solar.

Solar can also be mixed with smaller scale argiculture.

In the UK at least, and in general I think, this is not really true. There is plenty of land that is marginal for arable farming purposes and this is what is targeted for wind farming.

You can put solar on the roof and you can farm between the wind turbines, so that's not correct.

Solar on the roof only matters for single family homes, of which you won't find too many in European cities. Solar on the roof of a 12 story apartment building is not going to do much to help the residents.

My comment is missing a "for the same energy output as nuclear" prefix.

> If you're in a neighbor country of France: congrats, your electricity is much more polluted than France's is.

Sorry but that statement is absolutely true, even of Switzerland.

As I write, France's consumption-based carbon intensity is 92g, Switzerland is 130 (importing 2.36GW of dirty electricity from Germany, 1.44GW from France)

https://app.electricitymap.org/map

> I live in Switzerland, 60% of my electricity comes from hydro.

Hydro isn't the panacea. It's destroying ecosystems. Climate change is a problem but the biodiversity collapse another one.

https://eu.patagonia.com/fr/en/stories/telling-the-dam-truth...

i agree a 100% sir!

i was just replying to a comment saying that nuclear is cleaner

I live in Switzerland too. That hydro comes from water pumped uphill at night by cheap French nuclear power. (/s. Mostly.)

what the **** ** are you saying. not even 10% of hydro can pump in CH.

> I live in Switzerland, 60% of my electricity comes from hydro.

Switzerland in an anomaly on virtually every metrics you can come by.

yes! and we are the worst on many other metrics!! for instance one of the biggest marketplace for worldwide oil. take any of the worst polluting company, most have their headquarters here.

Reminds me of those smug Norwegians subsidising EVs with the profits of oil exports.

We’re all a bit jealous of course.

And whose country's electricity is pumping water up Switzerland's reversible dams during the night ?

I don't understand the down-votes you get..it's mostly Frances nuclear-power.

But little correction: During the Night IN Wintertime

My country's energetic policy is catastrophic. Don't get me wrong.

Saying that France is great is brutally inaccurate tho.