BERN. Voters in Sion go to the polls on Sunday to decide whether the Valais capital will host the largest alpine solar installation yet proposed in Switzerland, a 42 megawatt array planned for the south facing slopes above the city. The ballot has become a proxy for a question facing mountain communes across the country: how much landscape is winter electricity worth.
The project would place about 70,000 panels across terraces between 1,700 and 2,100 metres, on pasture above the vineyards that ring the town. At altitude, the panels sit above the autumn fog that blankets the valley floor, which is the entire point: high alpine arrays generate a disproportionate share of their output in the winter half year, when Switzerland's grid is tightest.
The numbers, as presented to voters, are these: an investment of CHF 60 million by the municipal utility together with a private partner, annual production of around 55 gigawatt hours, enough for roughly 9,000 households, and a projected 60 per cent of output delivered between October and March. The site would remain pastoral, with sheep grazing between the rows.
The vote is possible because of two legal changes. The canton of Valais wrote large solar installations into its energy law with an accelerated procedure, and the federal urgent measures act exempts qualifying alpine projects from parts of the normal planning hierarchy. A local committee collected 2,400 signatures to force the ballot, exercising a communal right that predates both laws.
The alignment of interests is unusual. The municipal council backs the project, as do the cantonal government, the utility, the local section of the farmers' union and much of the business community, which sees construction work and a winter rate for snowmaking in the resorts above town. Against it stand landscape protection associations, a group of winegrowers concerned about glare above the historic terraces, and some homeowners on the opposite slope.
Opinion polling by the local newspaper puts support at 55 per cent, with the youngest and oldest cohorts most in favour and the undecided concentrated among those with a view of the site. The campaign has been civil by communal standards, though the poster budget of the yes side, funded by the utility, has drawn formal complaints.
The canton is watching the margin as much as the result. Valais has positioned itself as the engine of Switzerland's winter electricity strategy, and its government has said that a clear yes in Sion would smooth the path for a dozen pending applications. A narrow yes, officials concede, would invite objections; a no would return the strategy to the drawing board.
Proponents frame the choice as one between two kinds of visibility: panels on the slope, or deeper dependence on imports from abroad. “The panels are visible from the valley floor, and so is the alternative,” a municipal energy official said at the last public information evening.
Opponents answer that visibility is not the only cost. They cite the federal inventory of landscapes of national importance, which covers part of the slope, the maintenance roads that would scar the pasture, and the precedent: once one commune accepts an array, they argue, every south facing alp between Lake Geneva and the Furka becomes a negotiation.
If the yes prevails on Sunday, construction could begin next spring, with first electricity flowing in the winter of 2028. Appeals are limited under the accelerated procedure, though opponents reserve the option of a federal court challenge on landscape grounds. The utility has said a no vote ends the project in its current form rather than sending it back for redesign.
The significance reaches well beyond the Rhone valley. Around 30 alpine solar projects are awaiting decisions in Valais, Graubünden and the Bernese Oberland, and the communal ballots of the past two years have split almost evenly. Each result shifts the assumptions of investors, cantons and the federal energy office about what the public will accept at altitude.
However Sion votes, the map of Swiss energy is being redrawn in the mountains, one communal ballot at a time. The panels now proposed for the slopes above the town will be followed by others elsewhere, and the question Sunday's voters answer will be asked again, in dialect, from the Simplon to the Surselva.