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Two-thirds of the govement’s tax revenue is at stake in the vote(Keystone) Projections show 83% of voters have renewed the govement’s right to tax its citizens and companies for another 15 years. This is a unique feature of Switzerland’s political system of direct democracy and federalism. ...

Three-wheeler dealer Express cheese delivery in Be There's one fewer delivery van on Be's streets. Kurt Staudenma from the Chäsbueb cheesemonger now uses a cargo bike. (Video: Peter Siegenthaler) See in other languages: 3 Whether it’s dropping off kids at nursery or goods to...

Leibstadt isone of Switzerland's five nuclear reactors. It remains on the grid but no newnuclear power plants can be built after Sunday's vote (Keystone) Voters have endorsed a new energy law that aims to promote renewable energy, ban new nuclear power plants and lower energy consumption. ...

Renewable energy production is just one of the aspects of the initiative. (Keystone) There is little dispute that the Swiss must reduce their ecological footprint, but the devil lies in the details. Voters will decide on Sunday whether there should be more govement intervention. If everyone lived like the Swiss 2.8 times worth the Earth’s resources would be used up every year. Put another way, we would need three planets instead of one. As part of the 2015 Paris climate accord, Switzerland has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% from 1990 levels by 2030 at the latest. The pledge is subject to parliamentary approval. And now, the Swiss are being asked to take a further step....

The campaign for a more sustainable economic system had a successful start but support is waning (Keystone) A proposal to reduce Switzerland’s carbon footprint by promoting a sustainable economy has seen a substantial drop in support ahead of a nationwide vote. Pollsters expect the initiative to fail at the ballot box on September 25. “There is a clear trend towards a No majority,” says political scientist Martina Mousson of the GfS Be polling and research institute, which carried out the poll. The initiative lost 10% of its backing among respondents compared with a previous survey four weeks ago. At the same time, opponents of the initiative put forward by the Green Party gained 14%, pi...

Switzerland is among the world leaders in recycling of glass and other material. But it also has a very high waste production proportional to its population (Keystone) Switzerland needs an economy that is based on the sustainable use of natural resources. An initiative by the Green Party wants to incorporate this into the country’s constitution, but opponents are convinced such a strategy is unrealistic. Voters have the final say at the ballot box on September 25. It is a fact that the consumption of natural resources worldwide has been exceeding the Earth’s capacity to regenerate itself since the 1980s. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that by 2050 the global ec...

On April 26, 1986, the meltdown of the Cheobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine marked one of the worst-ever accidents in the history of the energy industry. The catastrophe seemed to confirm the worst expectations of the environmental movement, which had always waed against the ecological risks of nuclear power. By Rolf Wüstenhagen Thirty years later, the nuclear industry is facing a meltdown of a different kind: an economic meltdown. “New nuclear – the economics say no” was the headline of a 2009 analyst report published by Citigroup. The bankers had taken a closer look at the financial viability of the proposed construction of nuclear power plants in the UK and concluded that five ri...