SwissEnergy, the successor program to the Energy 2000 Action Plan, builds cooperation between the federal government, Swiss cantons, and local authorities with industrial, consumer, and environmental organizations and public and private sector agencies by implementing voluntary measures based on performance mandates. Based upon these performance mandates, target agreements are established with companies and sectors specifying binding targets for each partner involved (SwissEnergy, 2004). In addition, SwissEnergy provide lump sum payments for cantons, information campaigns, and RD&D programs and continued many of the activities of the Energy 2000 Action Plan. Although all direct incentives for renewable energies available under the Energy 2000 Action Plan were eliminated, SwissEnergy established important voluntary financial contributions to cantonal programs for renewable heat (IEA, 2004). A new phase of the SwissEnergy programme for the period 2006-2010 was designed in 2005 and was implemented at the beginning of 2006.
Under SwissEnergy, the Swiss Geothermal Society was given the responsibility of promoting geothermal energy at the national level. The network of experts that was created under this framework aimed to target 4 main activity areas within its promotional scheme: information, marketing, education, and quality assurance. As part of this national promotional scheme, various brochures on geothermal heat have been produced, Geothermie Newsletters have been published, and a database created with people and organizations in Switzerland involved in geothermal energies as part of the information branch. Regular university lectures and various workshops have been organized as part of the education support. In addition, a quality label was introduced in 2002 for the entire geothermal heat pump system as part of the quality assurance activity requirements. The activities of the Swiss Geothermal Society helped enforce the success of this package of incentives.
