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Print articleThe awards honour the world's best projects promoting the large-scale use of renewable energies. From some 70 nominees, a high-profile jury picked the nine winners of the first energy 'Oscars', who travelled to Switzerland from as far away as Abu Dhabi, China, India, Kenya, Sweden and the USA to receive their awards.
The World Clean Energy Awards will take place in a different country each year, with the inaugural 2007 ceremony being held in Switzerland. The winners of the World Clean Energy Awards set new standards for the large-scale use of clean energy solutions.
A number of awards were up for grabs in the following categories:
* Construction (new buildings, urban development, renovation)
* Transport and Mobility
* Products (agriculture, mining, industry, utilities)
* Services, Trade and Marketing
* Finance and Investment
* Policy and Lawmaking
* NGOs and Initiatives
The sole European winner was for Sustainable City in Hammarby Sj?stad, Sweden.
Hammarby Sj?stad is a new district on the waterfront in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden. The district will offer 10,000 apartments for 25,000 residents. From day one, the City of Stockholm has imposed tough environmental requirements on buildings, infrastructural solutions and the traffic environment. To obtain these goals, integrated planning, innovative solutions and new technologies was necessary.
The project runs until 2016, and today half of the city area is done. The Project Management Office, which has run the project from the beginning, has made sure to achieve all environmental requirements. GlashusEtt, the environmental information centre of Hammarby Sj?stad, provides lectures on sustainable city planning and encourages inhabitants to change their ways of life to be more sustainable. Due to this sustainable city concept, Hammarby Sj?stad has come to serve as a role model for urban development projects all around the world.
As an urban ecological district, Hammarby Sj?stad has adopted the practice of circular metabolism to facilitate the accomodation and efficient use of the resources required by residents and the resulting waste. Individual households dispose of their solid waste into a vacuum-based underground collection system that allows for separating the waste into organic, recycleable and other forms. Combustible garbage is processed and returned to the community as electricity and hot water.
About 1,000 apartments have installed stoves that use biogas derived from the district's wastewater. The public transportation of the area is also fueled with biogas. Additionally, the goal is to reclaim about one-half of the nitrogen and water, and about 95% of phosphorus, in the wastes in order to use these as fertiliser for agricultural activities in the area.
When the project is complete, the Hammarby Sjostad city aims to achieve a compact urban community served by a fast train and pedestrian and bicycle-friendly environment in order to reduce the need for cars within the city.
All of these steps, taken together, will ensure a healthier and more environmentally-friendly community, with significant cost savings for all residents, the advancement of new clean energy technologies, and major lessons learned/experiences that can be replicated in other cities and communities around the world.
