Where we import electricity from: Bet you can’t guess the main supplier

Once a year, Swiss electricity suppliers must tell their customers where they get the part of the electricity that they do not produce themselves. For example, the IWB (Industrial Works Basel) recently announced that 76.66 percent of its electricity (100 percent produced from renewable energy sources) comes from Switzerland and therefore 23.34 percent from abroad. This includes, for example, all wind energy and some solar energy.

How would you describe that? That there is a wind turbine running somewhere in the North Sea especially for Switzerland? Unfortunately, the answer is not that simple.

Important to know about electricity grids: the same amount must always be fed in as is consumed. To illustrate this, imagine a huge swimming pool with millions of drain holes of different sizes (consumers) and thousands of inlets of different sizes (producers). It is the producers’ job to ensure that there is always enough water flowing into the pool so that the level does not drop or rise. However, their individual additions mix during this process.

The pool example is useful because it illustrates that the consumer is in the dark about the actual source of the physical good purchased. It extracts water/electricity from the pulp. The question therefore arises as to how it is possible for the IWB to offer its consumers electricity exclusively from renewable sources.

To solve this dilemma, certificates of origin are produced in parallel with each kilowatt hour of electricity produced. These are tradable. If the Swiss supplier promises that its energy comes from 100 percent renewable sources, this means nothing more than that the company has purchased the same number of certificates of origin from renewable sources for the amount of electricity physically purchased. What may seem counterintuitive at first glance is a pragmatic solution to enable proof of origin – and especially to compensate clean energy producers accordingly.

However, some consequences of this system are difficult to understand. Icelandic certificates can also be obtained. This is despite the fact that there is no line from the island, which is 1,000 kilometers from the Norwegian mainland, to Europe. The physical Icelandic electricity is only consumed on the island, but the certificates of origin are freely tradable. Swiss suppliers also purchase these.

The question of where our electricity comes from can therefore only be broken down into guarantees of origin – and these are reflected in quarterly reports from Pronovo AG, the accredited certification body for recording guarantees of origin in Switzerland (Cockpit HKN). Before we get to the figures for the first two quarters of 2023, let’s do a little guessing game. Which certificates did Swiss electricity suppliers buy the most?

Norwegian hydropower wins by far. German wind energy is found further away – even behind Dutch solar energy. By the way, in the first quarter we imported Serbian water electricity in second place.

In the second quarter, and this shows the volatility of the sector, Serbian hydropower no longer plays a role. Trade with Norway continues to flourish. Hydropower is also imported from France and Sweden. Once again, German wind energy does not play a decisive role in this country, but Dutch solar energy does.