Public transport should expand photovoltaics
Solar energy offers transport companies huge potential. If their buildings were used to generate solar energy, the yield would exceed current Swiss electricity consumption by 10 percent. This is shown in a new guide from the Federal Office of Transport.
Photovoltaics offers all public transport companies the opportunity to take a large part of their energy supply into their own hands. A new guide from the Federal Office of Transport refers to this. The authority developed it together with the Swiss Association for Solar Energy, Swissolar .
As Swissolar writes in a summary of this guide, solar energy can make a decisive contribution to replacing non-renewable energies in public transport. The electricity consumption of all transport companies is currently around 2.7 terawatt hours. In addition, there are 120 million liters of diesel. If all public transport is to be operated in a CO2-neutral manner in the future, it will need around 3.5 terawatt hours of electricity. Of this, 2 terawatt hours, or 60 percent, would already be produced by the hydropower plants of the SBB .
The production of the remaining 1.5 terawatt hours with solar energy would require around 1 square meter of photovoltaic module area per inhabitant in Switzerland. The same area per inhabitant provides the energy required to transport a person 2,500 kilometers by train in one year. As the Federal Office of Energy states in its energeia plus magazine, the potential for solar power in the Swiss transport company's building stock is 67 terawatt hours per year. That exceeds the total current Swiss electricity consumption by 10 percent.
The guide advises small and large transport companies on investment opportunities and approval procedures for real estate, rail technology and infrastructure. He also goes into funding opportunities and personal consumption. It also provides specific official recommendations that support public transport in becoming climate-neutral.