Walter Schmid

Walter Schmid, born in 1944, is a Swiss entrepreneur credited with developing the Kompogas process around 1989 and with founding the Kompogas company in 1991, which turns vegetable waste into biogas and compost. He founded his construction business in Glattbrugg in 1966 at the age of 21, taking over an existing firm with five employees, and has built energy-saving solutions throughout his career, including one of the first vacuum solar collector systems in Switzerland in 1975 and a first building integrated photovoltaic system in 1988. His Solcar electric vehicle concept won prizes in 1990 but found too few buyers and was dropped. Kompogas grew to about 80 plants worldwide and passed to Axpo and then to Hitachi Zosen Inova. Between 2010 and 2012 he built the Umwelt Arena in Spreitenbach as an exhibition centre for energy efficiency, and in 2016 completed an apartment building in Brütten with no connection to other grids. His awards include the Solar Prize Switzerland in 2003 and the Swiss Environmental Award in 2010.