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a This work has been undertaken with the support of NSF-NCCR climate and Federal Office for the Environment grants. We are very grateful to Martin Peter, Carten Nathani and the Federal Office of Statistics for providing us with disaggregated input-output tables. We also would like to thank Jacqueline Hug, Thorsten F. Schulz, Philippe Thalmann, Hal Turton as well as the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Remaining errors are under the sole responsibility of the authors.

Summary Decisions on climate change and nuclear policies are likely to have major influences on the future evolution of the Swiss energy system. To understand the implications of selected future policy decisions, we analyse the development of the Swiss energy system with a bottom-up technology-rich least-cost optimisation modelling framework. We use the Swiss MARKAL energy system model and analyse a stringent climate change mitigation policy with two policy variants on the availability of nuclear energy, i.e. with and without nuclear new builds. The energy system modelling approach provides insights into system-wide energy pathways, technology choice and cross-sectoral trade-offs like resource competition, electrification, and CO2 mitigation options across supply and demand sectors. To complement the full system approach, we apply an experimental TIMES model — a successor to MARKAL — of the Swiss electricity sector with a detailed representation of the electricity load curve accounting for diurnal and seasonal variations in demand and resource supply. The analytical results from both modelling approaches are presented and the electricity sector results compared to illustrate the complementary policy insights. The implications for realising an ambitious climate target with and without investment in new nuclear plants are discussed, and a number of areas for possible policy support identified.

The goal of the PAC-Car project, a joint undertaking of ETH Zurich and its partners, was to build a vehicle powered by a hydrogen fuel cell system that uses as little fuel as possible. PAC-Car II set a new world record in fuel efficient driving (the equivalent of 5,385 km per liter of gasoline) during the Shell Eco-marathon in Ladoux (France) on June 26, 2005. This book, addressed to graduate students, engineering professors and others interested in fuel economy contests, is the first to summarize the issues involved when designing and constructing a vehicle for fuel economy competitions. It describes the adventure of developing the PAC-Car II and others some specific technical advice for anyone who wants to design an ultra-lightweight land vehicle, whatever its energy source.