Construction site alert! From 2025 and for five years, the city center of Geneva will be gutted everywhere, just like the densely populated areas of the canton. Nearly 100 kilometers of enormous pipes will be buried there: the “hot and cold highways”, as State Councilor Antonio Hodgers called them on Wednesday, or structuring thermal networks, by their barbaric name. This is because it involves supplying, by 2030, 1,700 buildings with 80% non-fossil energy, i.e. from heat recovery, geothermal energy, lake water, stations purification or even biomass.
“We will have to make huge holes in the streets and then fill them in. “It’s an incredible challenge,” Robert Cramer, president of Industrial Services (SIG), warned on Wednesday. The crux of the matter, according to him, will be information for the population. “We will have to explain that there will be a project, how long it will last, that we are working for people and not to annoy them. A number will respond to their requests at all times. If a worker comes and makes noise under your windows at 7 a.m., then you don’t see anyone for two weeks, it’s not okay. It can’t continue like this!”
The other major issue will be coordination: the State and the SIG, which also worked upstream with the City of Geneva, wish to take advantage of the opportunity to carry out several projects simultaneously. In short, even if it means annoying the residents, you might as well only do it once. “It’s a hell of a plan,” said Robert Cramer. When we are going to touch a street, we are going to touch it a lot”, just to solve everything at once: development of cycle paths, tree planting, installation of sound-absorbing coverings. “There will be more construction sites in the city in the coming years than today,” warned Antonio Hodgers; but, on the positive side, “perhaps fewer small projects,” added Robert Cramer.
Carbon neutrality objective
This immense project is part of the desire of the State of Geneva to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 60% in 2030, and to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050. At that date, the objective is that half of the canton’s thermal demand is provided with 100% renewable energy. This will involve connecting 7,000 buildings to “hot and cold highways”. Because the heating of buildings and the production of hot water represent more than 50% of Geneva’s energy consumption – and to date, these tasks still depend 90% on oil and gas.
“Energy sovereignty”
The Council of State validated this Wednesday the prices for energy supplied via structuring thermal networks (for which the SIG will have invested 1.5 billion francs by 2030). The average price will be 18 cents per kilowatt hour for GeniTerre and 22 cents for hot and cold GeniLac, a rate similar to those charged elsewhere in Switzerland, the SIG indicated. “Our goal is to have the lowest possible price, because next to it, there is oil and gas,” summarized Robert Cramer. And we guarantee its stability.” This is essential, underlines Antonio Hodgers, who recalls the explosion in gas prices when the war in Ukraine broke out. “This project gives us energy sovereignty.”
