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.
> 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.
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.
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)
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.