Law on Energy

The Federal Energy Law was adopted by the Parliament in September 2016 and entered into force on 1 January 2018. It replaced the Law on Energy of 1998 and its predecessor Decree on Energy Use of 1991.

 

The Energy Law envisages measures to reduce energy consumption and to increase production of renewable energy in the following areas:  

 

Regulations about stating the energy consumption of installations, vehicles and equipment, and about reducing their consumption.  

 

Cantonal legislation in the building sector (heat insulation, individual metering and billing of heating and hot water).  

 

Financial incentives for the efficient use of energy, renewable sources of energy and waste heat and promotion measures (information, advice, education, training, research, pilot installations, demonstration installations).  

 

Guidelines and regulations to ensure the economic and environmentally friendly supply of energy (responsibility of the energy industry for the supply of energy, the use of waste heat in power stations which run on fossil fuels, regulations for independent power producers).  

 

The legislation also continued the system of feed-in tariffs for energy from renewable sources, which was commenced under the Federal Energy Decree of 1991. The grid surcharge on the electric transmission grid amounts to 2.3 ct/kWh (up from 1.5ct/kWh) from 2018.

 

The interested reader is referred to the original legal texts to become aware of periodic updates on the law and the corresponding ordinances.

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