On 2 September 2026 the Federal Council adopted its report on synthetic energy carriers and seasonal energy storage for strengthening security of supply, and in particular security of electricity supply in winter. It answers postulate 23.3023, tabled by the National Council’s Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy Committee in February 2023 and adopted by the National Council in May of that year. Fifteen pages, three and a half years in the making – and for the Swiss Power-to-X sector, a document worth reading closely rather than reacting to from the headline.
Much of it is fair. Some of it is new. And one part of it does not hold together.
What the report actually concludes
PtX derivatives can in principle contribute to seasonal storage and to diversifying the energy mix, the report says – but their contribution to winter electricity will be limited in the short and medium term. The reasons given are high conversion losses and the resulting costs, long lead times, and the absence of any systematic survey of suitable geological storage formations in Switzerland.
For winter supply, the Federal Council puts other measures first: expanding renewable generation, lifting the ban on new nuclear power plants and the possible construction that would follow, using existing storage – above all storage hydropower – more cost-effective storage technologies, particularly thermal ones, and exchange with neighbouring countries.
Where does that leave Power-to-X? Roughly where the Swiss hydrogen strategy already placed it: in applications where direct electrification is technically or economically constrained. High-temperature industrial process heat first, then aviation, heavy road transport, shipping, and peak load in CHP plants and thermal networks. In the electricity sector, a complementary role – “as a strategic reserve”.
The report is also explicit that a substantial share of future demand will have to be imported, because domestic renewable electricity will not be sufficient to produce PtX derivatives economically at the scale required. That is not a comfortable sentence for anyone selling “made in Switzerland” molecules, but it is an honest one.
The circular argument on page 10
Here is where the report undermines itself. One of its central reasons for caution is that the geological preconditions for underground storage in Switzerland are “insufficiently researched”.
Parliament had already noticed this. Motion 20.4063, “An end to the black box”, instructed the Federal Council to draw up a national programme for the systematic exploration of the subsurface. In April 2026 the Federal Council asked Parliament to write that motion off – to abandon the national prospection campaign altogether. The reason: even the minimal version would cost more than CHF 100 million, and the money is not there given the 2027 relief package.
So the missing data becomes an argument against the technology, while the collection of that same data is declined. The National Council and the Council of States have the final say on the write-off, and the file is still open. If you think Switzerland should know what is under its feet before ruling out what could be stored there, this is the decision to watch.
The numbers behind the verdict – and how old they are
The report’s quantitative core comes from the Energy Perspectives 2050+, published at the end of 2020. Its “surplus electricity” table projects 1.4 TWh in 2035, rising to 2.8 TWh in 2040, 4.5 TWh in 2045 and 5.9 TWh in 2050, with installed electrolyser capacity going from 1 GW to 1.5 GW over the same period.
The efficiency table is the one that will be quoted against us. Round-trip efficiency including reconversion to electricity: hydrogen 25–40 percent, methane 20–30, methanol 15–25, synthetic hydrocarbon chains 10–20, ammonia 20–30. The report adds, correctly, that these figures exclude waste heat use – and that recovering that heat is central to overall efficiency. The table that gets cited will not carry that caveat.
The report itself concedes that the 2050+ perspectives “no longer adequately reflect the latest developments in all areas”, and points to the Energy Perspectives 2060 now being prepared. That is the honest place to make the technical case: with current cost assumptions, sector coupling, and waste heat counted in.
A door the Federal Council opens itself
One passage is genuinely new. The report states that PtX derivatives will play a complementary role in the security domain – specifically for military mobility, which will continue to depend on liquid fuels in relevant parts because of operational requirements, high energy density and the limited electrifiability of certain applications. Synthetic liquid energy carriers, it concludes, can therefore contribute not only to climate targets but also to supply-chain resilience, provided their procurement, production or stockpiling is diversified and crisis-proof.
That is the same argument the eFuel Alliance made for Europe in its recent resilience paper – now written into a Swiss Federal Council report. It deserves to be carried into supply and compulsory-stockpile policy rather than left as a sentence on page 13.
Where SPIN differs: the CO₂ question
Throughout its overview table, the report describes synthetic methane, methanol and synthetic hydrocarbons as CO₂-neutral “only with a biogenic or atmospheric carbon source”.
That is not our position. What matters is not where the carbon comes from, but whether using it creates an incentive to bring additional fossil fuel out of the ground. Where CO₂ from industrial sources is captured and used, that carbon displaces fossil carbon instead of mobilising new carbon. Carbon capture and utilisation therefore belongs in the picture as a matter of principle, not as a transitional concession – and if those sources are themselves increasingly fed with recycled CO₂ as feedstock, the circle closes completely.
The narrow definition also has a cost consequence the report does not follow through. It notes that biogenic and atmospheric CO₂ is available only to a limited extent and requires capture that is both expensive and energy-intensive. Those costs are then counted against Power-to-X. Restricting eligible carbon sources drives the very costs that are subsequently used to argue the technology is too expensive.
Switzerland has already written the principle into law
Among the existing instruments the report lists in passing is one that deserves more than the half-sentence it gets: the crediting of synthetic fuels under the CO₂ emission regulations for new vehicles.
That instrument is Article 11a of the CO₂ Act (SR 641.71), inserted by the federal act of 15 March 2024 and in force since 1 January 2025. It allows importers and manufacturers of vehicles to apply for the CO₂ reduction achieved through the use of renewable synthetic fuels to be taken into account when their new-car fleet emissions are calculated – on presentation of evidence showing which volumes were contractually assigned to them by which supplier. The fuels must meet the requirements of Article 35d of the Environmental Protection Act.
The wording is administrative; the principle behind it is not. Swiss law now recognises that what counts in road transport is the CO₂ actually avoided, not which technology sits in the vehicle. Electric mobility and e-fuels are two routes to the same destination, and the law puts them on an equal footing. That is a deliberately different starting point from the EU’s, where the climate performance of a car is still measured at the tailpipe – so a battery-electric vehicle counts as emission-free by definition, while an engine running on renewable fuel is counted as if it were running on fossil fuel.
How much that single measuring point actually costs is the subject of a second article we are publishing at midday today: a new white paper from the Technical University of Munich, “Defossilisation, Not Decarbonisation”, synthesising 19 studies and 47 modelled scenarios. Its finding is that battery-electric cars, which the EU regulation counts as 100 percent climate-neutral, cut life-cycle emissions by 41 percent on average – and that at the intended pace of electrification the EU will miss its own 2030 target for passenger cars by more than 100 million tonnes of CO₂. It is the evidence base for what Article 11a already assumes, and it arrives eight weeks before the European Parliament votes on the reform.
This matters for the report at hand. Switzerland has already legislated the technology-neutral principle for road transport: reward the fossil carbon actually displaced, wherever it is displaced. Extending the same logic to seasonal storage, to industrial process heat and to the eligible carbon sources discussed above would be a continuation of Swiss practice, not a departure from it.
Half the mandate is missing
The postulate asked for two things. A stocktake – delivered. And proposals for the regulations, framework conditions, instruments and direct and indirect support measures with which production, transport, storage and reconversion of synthetic energy carriers could be supported and financed. On that second part the Federal Council explicitly declines, pointing instead to the hydrogen strategy, existing instruments, the Round Table on Energy Storage and the national storage strategy in preparation.
The reasoning is defensible. The effect is that the decisions move elsewhere – which makes it considerably more important who is in the room when they are taken:
- The Round Table on Energy Storage, run by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy with industry, cantons, municipalities, research institutions and environmental organisations. It ends in a synthesis report with measures and responsibilities, and PtX storage is explicitly in scope.
- The national storage strategy and action plan demanded by motion 25.3943, which builds on that synthesis report.
- The Energy Perspectives 2060, which will replace the 2020 data the current report relies on.
- The postulate report 24.4563 Roduit on the role of energy storage in Switzerland more broadly.
Meanwhile the projects continue regardless. Gaznat’s site at Oberwald in Valais has completed both its geological survey and the clarifications on connecting to the transit gas pipeline – the most advanced storage project in the country. ETH Zurich, EPFL, Empa and PSI have launched the Coalition for Green Energy and Storage to take PtX and storage solutions through demonstrator projects. The sector is not waiting for a report.
One question we will leave open
The Coalition for Green Energy and Storage is a young and small organisation, and it is named in the report. SPIN is not. The Swiss Power-to-X Collaborative Innovation Network is the network of Power-to-X networks in this country: more than 70 members, the entire value chain from renewable electricity through electrolysis and carbon sourcing to the finished fuel, and more or less everyone working in the field in Switzerland. Why the one appears in a federal report on synthetic energy carriers and the other does not is a question we will leave open here.
What we can point to is the work. In July 2026 SPIN published a paper setting out 42 concrete regulatory blockages for Power-to-X in Switzerland, each with its practical effect and a proposed solution: certification and investment security, over-regulation and technology neutrality, financing practice, grid fee exemptions, missing market ramp-up instruments, imports and guarantees of origin, investment cycles and rule stability, and renewable gases and gas infrastructure. It was consolidated from the EPX workshop held in the Federal Parliament Building in December 2025, from the practical experience of SPIN members, and from international references.
If the Federal Council is looking for the regulatory proposals postulate 23.3023 asked for and this report declines to make, they are on the table and itemised: Regulatory barriers and proposed solutions for Power-to-X in Switzerland (PDF, English) – Regulatorische Blockaden und Lösungsvorschläge für Power-to-X in der Schweiz (PDF, Deutsch).
Source: Federal Council report “Synthetische Energieträger und saisonale Energiespeicher zur Stärkung der Versorgungssicherheit und insbesondere der Stromversorgungssicherheit im Winter” (PDF, 15 pages), in fulfilment of postulate 23.3023 of the National Council’s Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy Committee, adopted 2 September 2026. Published in German, with summaries in French and Italian.
🤖 AI transparency: This text and its visual were created using AI, reviewed and approved by a human.
Power-to-X Congress Switzerland 2026 – 22 September 2026, Kursaal Bern: “Reality Check with Net Zero”. Programme and registration.