In the opinion of the Zurich Farmers’ Association, official hurdles must be removed for farmers to switch to photovoltaics, biogas and wood.
Solar cells are installed on the roof of an outdoor barn.
The office of the Zurich Farmers’ Association is located near the Stettbach train station, in the middle of the up-and-coming Hochbord residential and commercial area. Several skyscrapers are under construction, nothing indicates the agricultural sector. But there are still farms in Dübendorf. There are 3,300 across the canton and 50,000 across Switzerland.
The energy crisis is a major challenge for agriculture. Some farmers arm themselves with emergency power generators against impending power shortages. Nevertheless, the Zurich Farmers’ Association (ZBV) did not want to whine at its traditional Martini press conference. On Friday he informed about the potential and opportunities of photovoltaics, biogas and wood for agriculture. Martin Haab, Association President and SVP National Councilor, put it this way: “Today we want to show that we are not part of the problem, but part of the solution.”
Motivate the farmers
The farmers’ association wants to support farmers so that they can market their regionally produced energy as regionally and economically as possible, Haab said. “Because we cannot place all our hopes on the pioneering spirit and goodwill of experienced farmers alone.” The association now wants to ensure that official hurdles fall. His goal is to motivate other farmers to use the energy potential.
ZBV Managing Director Ferdi Hodel used concrete examples to explain what Zurich farmers who rely on renewable energies today can get out of it. A farmer supplies eight households with heat from 300 cubic meters of wood, which corresponds to 50 to 70 tree trunks, and can also heat his own apartment and restaurant. This saves 16,000 liters of heating oil.
Another farmer runs a small biogas plant. He produces around 180,000 kilowatt hours of electricity from the manure from his cows. This corresponds to the needs of 40 households. He also produces 180 kilowatt hours of heat for his own business. This enables him to replace 12,000 liters of heating oil on his farm. According to Ferdi Hodel, it is a pioneer company. In the canton of Zurich there are only large biogas plants.
The third case study is a power-intensive laying hen farm with a photovoltaic system on the roof and a heat pump. “This combination will often be used in agriculture in the future,” said Hodel. The farmer produces 45,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. That’s enough for ten households. Added to this are 26,000 kilowatt hours of heat. The producer can thus replace 8000 liters of heating oil on his farm.
“These are not huge numbers,” admitted the ZBV manager. The potential is all the more interesting. According to Christoph Koller, lecturer at the ZHAW for renewable energies, the total area of all roof areas on farms in the canton of Zurich is 7.2 square kilometers. The existing line network allows for a photovoltaic system on around 10 percent of this roof area. This could supply 12.6 percent of all households in the city of Zurich with electrical energy from agriculture.
Koller estimates the expansion costs at 90 million francs, the CO2– Savings to 50,000 tons per year. As the speaker went on to state, 25 percent of all Zurich city households could be supplied with energy from agriculture if the electrical distribution network were expanded by a factor of 2. The ZHAW lecturer sees significantly more potential in biogas than in photovoltaics. Because of the logistics, however, there are only a few locations for such systems. In addition, economic operation is currently hardly possible.
Aesthetics secondary
The Zurich Farmers’ Association is now calling for maximum exploitation of the potential of renewable energies. “But only where it makes sense,” Hodel said. However, various hurdles would complicate the energy projects in the agricultural zone. Farmers who wanted to produce electricity in larger quantities with photovoltaics would have to invest in transformer stations. However, the feed-in tariffs do not cover costs. In addition, according to Hodel, it is difficult to obtain a building permit for transformer stations. And because there is only one connection per plot, energy production is a problem beyond self-sufficiency. There are further hurdles with facade photovoltaics, for which an exceptional permit is required.
The farmers’ association does not want to make demands, but rather “find solutions together for difficulties,” as Hodel put it at the end. “In terms of spatial planning, we have to learn that energy production and aesthetics are given a different weighting. It cannot be that aesthetics exclude energy production.»
From the point of view of the farmers’ association, it should also be possible to connect the locations of energy production and consumption across zones. In addition, the ZBV is of the opinion that the energy aspect must be increasingly taken into account in the approval process for new buildings in agricultural zones.
Finally, Hodel summed up the economic demand. So that the investments are worthwhile for the farmers, the canton should contribute to the costs of expanding the network. Or the feed-in tariffs should be increased. “We will look for solutions with the administration so that the farmer will also become an energy farmer in the future.”
As SVP National Councilor Martin Haab stated at the beginning, energy efficiency and energy production, but also climate protection, biodiversity and resource consumption are being discussed controversially in connection with agriculture. The Zurich Farmers’ Association wants to “proactively develop and establish good solutions for productive agriculture”. Haab mentioned the new Environment team. This is a recognized advice center for topics such as biodiversity, climate protection and renewable energies.