The National Council has joined the amendments of the Council of States and followed it with regard to the bill on the accelerated approval of wind power plants by 136 votes to 53. Originally, this bill came from the National Council’s Committee for the Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy. The background to this is the goal of making Switzerland less dependent on electricity imports in times of low sunshine.
According to a parliamentary press release, energy minister Albert Rösti (SVP) said that an increase in capacity was therefore necessary. However, this would have to be realised “without severely eroding the usual rights of co-determination”. According to the information, there was fundamental opposition to the wind power offensive in parliament only on the part of the SVP. The other parliamentary groups agree that wind energy makes a valuable contribution to the electricity supply in the winter months.
Therefore, the tenor was that it was unacceptable that projects had to wait more than 20 years for approval. The bill stipulates that the accelerated procedures may only be applied if the municipalities have already approved the installation as part of the land-use planning. According to Rösti, this applies to 39 turbines that are to supply 250 gigawatt hours of electricity annually. These include the Grenchenberg wind farm in the canton of Solothurn, the Eoljorat Sud and Sur Grati projects in the canton of Vaud and the Crêt Neuron project in the canton of Neuchâtel.
The accelerated procedures are to be applied to wind energy projects in the national interest until an additional capacity of 600 megawatts has been installed. For these projects, the canton will now be responsible for the building permit. In addition, the legal remedies against this decision will be limited: it will only be possible to challenge it before the highest cantonal court.
