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Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics

Table 3 Water fee regimes

From: The future of Swiss hydropower: how to distribute the risk and the profits?

Regime

Water fee (WF)

Fixed

Current water fee level based on gross capacitya

WF = 110 CHF/kWBr

Flexible

Flexible fee depending on reference market price (RMP)

WF = 1.75 RMP/kWBr

Tax on resource rent

Tax of 38.7% on resource rent

WF = 0.387(R − C)

  1. Based on Swiss Federal Council (2017) and SFOE (2018a, b). kWBr stands for kW of gross capacity
  2. aThe maximum water fee level allowed by federal regulation is set at 110 CHF/kWBr. Only the cantons of Bern, Jura, Zug, and Vaud stayed below this tax level (Swiss Federal Council, 2018). For our analysis, we use the observed water fee payments in 2015/16. As the flexible water fee payments are calculated in relation to observed payments, we assume that these cantons continue to have a relatively lower tax level
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