Walter Schmid (entrepreneur)

Walter Schmid with the Kompogas he invented (picture 2005)

Walter Schmid (born November 8, 1944 ; resident in Oberhelfenschwil ) is a Swiss entrepreneur . The development of the Kompogas process around 1989 was thanks to him, and Kompogas , a company he built up in 1991 (since 2011 Axpo Kompogas AG, since 2014 Hitachi Zosen Inova AG), is known throughout Switzerland. His construction company is based in Glattbrugg .

Live and act

Walter Schmid founded the construction business under his name in 1966 when he was 21 years old; it started with five employees when he took over the construction company G. Fumasoli in Glattbrugg. Early on, Schmid pragmatically built everything that was technically feasible in order to save (fossil) energy , always in the hope that the solutions would also pay off economically.

As early as 1975 Walter Schmid built one of the first vacuum solar collector systems in Switzerland, combined with log heating. This was followed by geothermal collectors , deep-water boreholes and, in 1988, his first building-integrated photovoltaic system . Today the construction company employs around 130 people.

«Solcar»

In contrast to building construction, where Schmid was able to implement his ideas independently, his “Solcar” electric commercial vehicle concept was already awarded prizes in 1990, but only found 150 of the 500 buyers required, so the project was discontinued.

Kompogas

In 1989, after the tinkering on the balcony at home, a fermenter of 20 cubic meters was built, and in 1991, with initial funding from the Canton of Zurich, a company was built that could produce biogas and compost from green waste .

Schmid first had to assert himself against politicians of all stripes in order to receive green waste. As early as 2005, the Handelszeitung wrote that rising energy prices would help for such projects in the future.

The company Kompogas AG launched in Rümlang with an annual output of about 2.8 million kWh. Trucks from Walter Schmid AG and the Kompogas company have been running on biogas since 1995, and the first truck reached its millionth kilometer in the summer of 2010. In 2009 Kompogas produced 18 million kilowatt hours of electricity and 9 million kilowatt hours of biogas in Switzerland.

80 systems are in use worldwide, the largest one is in Qatar . In the Swiss plants, the compost can be obtained free of charge by the population and is certified for organic farming. Axpo had held a minority stake in Kompogas since 2006, and Axpo had been the sole owner of the company since 2011. In October 2014 Hitachi Zosen Inova AG in Zurich took over the plant construction of the Kompogas process from Axpo.

Axpo continues to operate 15 fermentation plants based on the Kompogas process.

Environmental arena

The environmental arena on the information stand in the Shoppi Tivoli

Based on the experience of the Kompogas company with regard to mobilizing the population, Walter Schmid built a center in Spreitenbach from 2010 to 2012 in which the population can find out about the latest available technologies for energy efficiency. According to Schmid's approach, what is immediately technically feasible should be shown there, but nothing is sold. After Schmid had to pay the hard way with many of his innovations, the construction of the environmental arena did not rely on proven technology; the whole building is cooled by heat exchange with the subsurface in summer and heated in winter. The energy for this building technology requires a maximum of 60 percent of the energy from the roof surface from photovoltaic elements.

The sponsoring company Umwelt Arena AG was entered in the commercial register on October 22, 2009. Schmid invested 50 million francs in the project. For the first time for Walter Schmid, the project is not finished with the completion, but must be operated and not only energy-saving, but communicative. The canton of Aargau runs an exhibition on biodiversity, but this is the only public contribution. All other exhibitions are run by companies. The days of the week Thursday to Sunday are open to the public, and the building is also used as an event location.

Energy self-sufficient apartment building in Brütten

In 2016, the energy pioneer Schmid completed an apartment building in Brütten , which is the first in the world to have no connections to other networks.