Swiss cleantech project wins Energy Globe Award in Tehran

The ENERGY GLOBE Award was founded in 1999 by the Austrian energy pioneer Wolfgang Neumann and is one of today’s most prestigious environmental awards. Goal of the Award is to present successful sustainable projects to a broad audience, for many of our environmental problems already have good, feasible solutions. Projects which conserve and protect our resources or that employ renewable energy can participate.

With a global call for participation ENERGY GLOBE invites outstanding sustainable best practice projects to participate in the annual competition. From all over the world, some 800 projects and initiatives are submitted annually to compete for the award.

This year a project from Switzerland won one of the four global awards: Electric powered lorry which were developed by E-Force One and are tested since 2014 by Coop. The advantages of electric powered vehicles are undoubted: They are energy efficient, silent and zero-emission when operated. Up to now there was no suitable electric powered lorry for the carriage of goods available though. The 18 tonnes electric powered lorry developed by the Swiss company E-Force One sets new standards with its available weight of 10 tonnes for platform and cargo.

Coop, as the first retailer worldwide, will use a lorry of this size for the daily supply of super markets. The lorry is being operated with current from water power. There is a photovoltaic system installed on top of the lorry to be used as an additional current source during the journey. Coop reduces their carbon dioxide emissions through operation of this electric powered lorry and decreases noise exposure at the same time.

So far the goals have been met, with the electric truck is in use since January 2014 without major problems. Up to six distribution tours are made with the electric truck on one day to deliver goods from the distribution center at the suburbs of Zurich to supermarkets in Zurich (in total up to 240 kilometres a day). After each second tour the chauffeur has to make a 45 minute break as regulated by law – these breaks, as well as night-time, are used to fuel the truck at the charging station with environmentally friendly hydropower electricity.

(SK)