Hydropower

Hydropower produces around 58% of Swiss electricity on a ten-year average. Almost every storage reservoir in the country collects water from glaciated areas.

As glaciers disappear, the reservoirs can still fill from rain and snowmelt, but the water will arrive earlier, in spring rather than midsummer, and the total over the long term will be smaller.

Retreating glaciers also open new basins. In 2021 a federal round table agreed on 15 storage projects to secure winter power, among them new dams at the Trift and Gorner glaciers, in basins the ice has left or is leaving. The Gorner project alone is expected to produce 650 GWh in winter. Each project weighs energy against landscapes that have only just been uncovered.