Author: switzerlandtimes.ch

Switzerland’s residential battery market is growing fast. Around half of new photovoltaic installations are now paired with storage, according to Swissolar. Falling battery prices, lower payments for surplus solar power and the prospect of more flexible electricity tariffs are all helping to drive demand. But popularity should not be confused with profitability. In Switzerland, solar power already supplies about 14% of electricity demand. That creates a new problem: what to do with the surplus, when on sunny days generation exceeds consumption. Batteries offer one answer. More owners of single-family homes are pairing photovoltaic panels with storage, allowing excess power generated…

Supporters of the “Safeguard Swiss Neutrality” initiative launched their campaign in Bern on Tuesday, arguing that a Yes vote on September 27th is needed to prevent the country’s neutrality from being steadily eroded, reported RTS. Walter Wobmann, a Solothurn MP from the Swiss People’s Party (UDC/SVP), presented the campaign to the media. As president of the Egerkingen Committee, he has already been involved in two successful popular initiatives: the 2009 ban on minarets and the 2021 ban on covering one’s face in public. Mr Wobmann hopes to repeat those victories on September 27th, when Swiss voters and cantons will decide…

Around 1,000 tonnes of cigarette butts are discarded on the ground in Switzerland each year. The Green Liberal Party wants the federal government to do more to tackle the problem, including encouraging tobacco companies to redesign cigarette filters, reported RTS. Most filters are made from cellulose acetate, a polymer also used in the textile industry. In other words, they are a form of plastic. A cigarette butt can take up to 15 years to break down, releasing microplastics as it does so. These can enter water and soil and, eventually, the food chain. Céline Weber, a Green Liberal member of…

Swiss public-transport fares will rise by an average of 3.6% in December 2026, less than the 3.9% increase originally planned. The reduction follows negotiations between the industry and Switzerland’s price regulator. The price of a second-class GA travelcard, which provides unlimited travel on much of the Swiss public-transport network, will rise by CHF 100 to CHF 4,095. Alliance SwissPass, the industry body, had initially proposed an increase of CHF 200. A first-class GA will cost CHF 6,770, up from CHF 6,520. The original proposal was CHF 6,850. The increase has thus been cut from CHF 330 to CHF 250. Alliance…

The backers of Switzerland’s Safe Food initiative have lodged an appeal against the Federal Council and the Federal Chancellery, accusing them of misrepresenting the proposal in the official booklet for the vote on September 27th, RTS reported. The appeal was filed on Thursday with the government of the canton of Bern by Franziska Herren, an environmental campaigner and one of the initiative’s leading supporters. The campaigners say the authorities have wrongly presented the initiative’s central target as legally binding. The proposed constitutional amendment says that, within ten years, the federal government should seek to raise Switzerland’s net food self-sufficiency rate…

Ahead of Switzerland’s national day on August 1st, fireworks have generally been banned due to the risk of forest fires, although official displays are still permitted in some places, reports SRF. With Switzerland parched by drought, almost every canton has imposed restrictions on open fires and fireworks. Yet some authorities are allowing large official displays to go ahead. Critics say the exemptions undermine the bans. The rules vary by canton, but private fireworks are prohibited across most of the country. In French-speaking Switzerland, Geneva, Valais and Vaud have gone further by banning the sale of pyrotechnics, including small firecrackers and…

For 40 years, The Economist has indulged in what it refers to as “burgernomics”: a worldwide comparison of the price of a Big Mac. The McDonald’s Big Mac is remarkably consistent wherever you eat it, so you might expect its price to be consistent too. But it is not—and, according to the publisher, that reveals something about the true value of currencies. Perhaps. As usual, Switzerland’s Big Mac is the most expensive, costing US$ 9.04 (CHF 7.30), 45% more than the same burger in the US, which costs US$ 6.22. The most affordable double layered burgers are found in Indonesia…

Switzerland’s railways are carrying more people than ever. In the second quarter of 2026 passengers travelled 6.3bn kilometres by train, an increase of 5.2% from a year earlier, reported Litra. That surpassed the previous record, set in the final quarter of 2025, by nearly 200m passenger-kilometres, the collective distance travelled by passengers. This is good news for a country seeking to accommodate population growth without filling roads with more traffic. Yet headline numbers can conceal as much as they reveal. Passenger traffic grew far faster than railway capacity. Operators ran 53.24m train-path kilometres—a measure of train movements—during the quarter, just…

Swiss water reservoirs are unusually depleted for this time of year, reaching their lowest seasonal level in at least 20 years. According to the latest weekly data from the Federal Office of Energy (FOE), they are 46% full—16.4 percentage points below the average for the same point in the year over the past two decades. The unusually low levels reflect a combination of poor winter snowfall and an exceptionally dry spring. Federal data show that spring 2026 was among the driest since nationwide records began in 1864. Despite the shortfall, the federal government sees no immediate threat to Switzerland’s electricity…

Laboratory tests in the Swiss canton of Solothurn found excessive pesticide residues in one-third of vegetable samples taken from Asian grocery stores last year, prompting a criminal complaint against an importer. Asian supermarket vegetables tested by Solothurn’s food safety inspectors repeatedly failed compliance checks, according to the canton’s 2025 annual report. Officials analysed 38 vegetable samples from ten retailers for pesticide residues. The results were striking. Around one-third (32%) of the samples exceeded Switzerland’s legal limits for pesticides, a broad category covering chemicals used to control insects, fungi and other pests. Inspectors described the findings as sobering. The non-compliant samples…