Impact of snow variability on the Swiss winter tourism sector: implications in an era of climate change

With its numerous mountain regions and its well developed winter tourism infrastructures, Switzerland is a country whose tourism sector is known to be sensitive to snowpack variability. With climate change—which is predicted to have negative impacts on snow depths and duration—the need for accurately assessing the sensitivity of winter tourism consumption to changing snow conditions is reinforced. Taking advantage of newly available data on visitation rates at Swiss ski areas, we analyze the effect of snow conditions on skier visits using standard panel data regression techniques. We assume the magnitude of this effect to be conditional on the level of snowmaking investments. Higher snowmaking investments should lead to a lower sensitivity. Our results validate this hypothesis and also shed light on the competitive interactions between lower and higher lying ski areas located in the same tourism region. In fact, our results show that better snow conditions in the former reduces visitation rates in the latter. Eventually, we find that ski areas benefiting from sunny conditions tend to have, ceteris paribus, more skier visits. This suggests additional impacts if climate change were to modify sunshine duration in mountain region

Impact of snow variability on the Swiss winter tourism sector: implications in an era of climate change

With its numerous mountain regions and its well developed winter tourism infrastructures, Switzerland is a country whose tourism sector is known to be sensitive to snowpack variability. With climate change—which is predicted to have negative impacts on snow depths and duration—the need for accurately assessing the sensitivity of winter tourism consumption to changing snow conditions is reinforced. Taking advantage of newly available data on visitation rates at Swiss ski areas, we analyze the effect of snow conditions on skier visits using standard panel data regression techniques. We assume the magnitude of this effect to be conditional on the level of snowmaking investments. Higher snowmaking investments should lead to a lower sensitivity. Our results validate this hypothesis and also shed light on the competitive interactions between lower and higher lying ski areas located in the same tourism region. In fact, our results show that better snow conditions in the former reduces visitation rates in the latter. Eventually, we find that ski areas benefiting from sunny conditions tend to have, ceteris paribus, more skier visits. This suggests additional impacts if climate change were to modify sunshine duration in mountain regions

Modeling the Impacts of Climate Change on the Energy Sector: a Swiss perspective

When speaking of energy production and consumption in the context of climate change, the interest usually lies in mitigation policies and measures, i.e. the energy system is seen as an emitter of greenhouse gases. This paper takes a different approach and analyzes the impacts of climate change on the Swiss energy system. We study the impacts of a changing climate on both the energy demand and supply. For the former impacts, it is predicted that higher temperatures will modify future heating and cooling demands in opposite directions. As for the supply side, changes in precipitation will affect hydro generation whereas higher temperature will impact cooling facilities and energy efficiency of thermal power plants. To undertake the analysis, we use a Computable General Equilibrium model, the GEMINI-E3 which is a standard CGE model based on the GTAP database. In the first, methodological part of the paper, we present how to integrate within the GEMINI-E3 information related to temperature and precipitation. Future changes in these climate variables are obtained from four couplings of global and regional climate models realized in the framework of the European project ENSEMBLES. This project has produced regional climate scenarios at European level for impacts assessments using the high resolution RCM ensemble system and downscaling methods. This information is generally available for the period 1961-2100 at a grid resolution of 25 x 25 km. Based on these simulation data, we show how to derive impacts via econometrically estimated functions and how to construct aggregated indicators, such as cooling and heating degree-days, that are then used as exogenous variables within the GEMINI-E3 model. After the methodological part, we present different scenarios without and with climate change and compare their outcomes for the energy demand and supply at the 2050 time horizon. Whereas detrimental impacts on the supply side seem to remain limited in 2050, partly because of adaptation, we clearly find strong macroeconomic impacts through changes in energy demand for cooling and heating purposes. Furthermore, we show that the reduced energy demand for heating has positive impacts for the Swiss economy that largely outweigh the negative ones created by the increased energy demand for cooling. These results are intimately linked to the Swiss context, where the need for heating is much higher than the need for cooling. The net impact is all the more positive that fossil fuels, which are the main energy source for heating, are entirely imported

Modeling climate change adaptation in a computable general equilibrium model: an application to tourism

The issue of climate change adaptation becomes increasingly important in Switzerland, which has already faced higher than average global warming during the last decades. Winter tourism is expected to be one of the Swiss sectors most at risk from climate change mostly because of the increase in snowline altitude. In fact, several studies predicted high climate change costs for this sector. However, most of these studies have largely overlooked the role of adaptation in alleviating those costs. We tried to fill that gap with a better modeling of climate change adaptation in GEMINI-E3 which is a computable general equilibrium model. Future snow cover variations are derived using different climatic scenarios from the European ENSEMBLES project. By 2050, we find rather moderate welfare effects of a decreasing snowpack with costs ranging, for the Swiss economy, from 24 to 122 millions USD which represent a 0.01% to 0.03% decrease in final household consumption

Économiser de l’énergie grâce au réchauffement climatique

Le réchauffement climatique engendre de nombreux problèmes. Il comporte également quelques aspects positifs, notamment une diminution des besoins en chauffage durant l’hiver. Un scénario climatique moyen nous permet de prédire une diminution potentielle de quelque 16 % du besoin énergétique pour les bâtiments en 2060 par rapport à la moyenne observée en 1980–2009. Un tiers de ce potentiel est perdu à travers des effets de rebond directs et indirects. Il reste une baisse des émissions de CO2 de 3,9 % et un léger gain de bien-être pour les ménages, de 0,16 %

Impacts of global warming on energy use for heating and cooling with full rebound effects in Switzerland

Global warming is expected to lower the energy demand for heating, which would contribute to a decline in CO2 emissions. This effect may be offset by energy needs for additional cooling and by the impacts of households that reinvest the money they save on heating partly for greater thermal comfort but also for the consumption of other goods and services (rebound effects). These effects would be particularly significant in a country such as Switzerland, for which heating accounts for a large share of its CO2 emissions (28%) and which imports all its fossil fuels. This paper analyzes the impacts of global warming on the Swiss energy demand for space heating and cooling over the period 2010-2060. Climate projections are used to compute the changes in heating (HDD) and cooling degree-days (CDD), which determine the demand for space conditioning. We use the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model GEMINI-E3 to take into account the many interactions between supply and demand and to assess the general equilibrium effects of climate change on energy use. Several scenarios are simulated to analyze the impacts on energy used for space conditioning by households and the services and industry sectors. We also perform a sensitivity analysis on key variables related to the climate change scenarios and the penetration of air-conditioning systems. We find significant and positive welfare effects from reduced heating needs. This effect largely outweighs the increased electricity used for cooling

Energie sparen dank der Klimaerwärmung

Die Klimaerwärmung bringt vielfältige Probleme mit sich. Zu erwarten sind auch gewisse positive Auswirkungen, insbesondere ein geringerer Heizbedarf im Winter. Ein durchschnittliches Klimaszenario ergibt für das Jahr 2060 einen im Vergleich zum Durchschnitt des Zeitraums 1980 bis 2009 um 16 Prozent niedrigeren potenziellen Energiebedarf für Gebäude. Ein Drittel dieses Potenzials geht durch direkte und indirekte «Rebound-Effekte» verloren. Übrig bleiben eine Senkung des CO2-Ausstosses um 3,9 Prozent und ein leichter Wohlstandsgewinn für die Haushalte von 0,16 Prozent

The Effect of Energy Efficiency Enhancement on Innovation and Competitiveness

Our results lend support to the Porter Hypothesis and provide a clue to the underlying mechanism. We try to get at the causal effect of energy prices on TFP using a set of observations made annually on a large number of manufacturing industries located in OECD countries. We find that (i) rising energy prices have the potential to reduce TFP at the industry level, but (ii) when combined with the amount of R&D spending, rising energy prices increase TFP at the industry level, which means that sectors that spend more on R&D are those that take advantage of higher energy prices. When both channels – direct and mediated by R&D spending – are taken into account, higher energy prices raise productivity in most industries