Wind Turbine wins Green Challenge '09

Amsterdam, September 25 2009
A nearly invisible rooftop wind turbine has won the 500,000 euro Postcode Lottery Green Challenge 2009. "It's beyond a dream," said English entrepreneur Dean Gregory when Skype founder Niklas Zennström, a contest juror, announced his name. "This means we can focus solely on bringing this to market." Gregory entered the Challenge on behalf of the English company The Power Collective Limited – after finding out about it two days before the deadline. Each year, the Dutch Postcode Lottery gives away 500,000 euro to the inventor of the best climate-friendly invention.

Runners-up Shiply.com & Ephicas SideWing

Robert Matthams, Dean Gregory & Hjalmar van Raemdonck

For 2009, two one-time 100,000 euro prizes have also gone to runners-up, both services for the haulage industry. The online transport marketplace Shiply.com matches people shipping goods with truckers already going in the right direction, making the industry more efficient. The Ephicas SideWing truck trailer skirt lowers wind resistance by guiding airflow, cutting fuel use.

The RidgeBlade "has great potential to reduce emissions," said Greenpeace Netherlands' executive director Liesbeth van Tongeren, another juror, who read out the jury report at Friday's award ceremony. "The adaptation of an existing technology is innovative, and the production cost makes it affordable and attractive for consumers."

She said Shiply.com, already running in the UK, had "successfully applied a scalable business model to cut down on the extreme inefficiency of the transport sector." And the Ephicas SideWing "will greatly reduce carbon emissions in a sector where this is difficult to do."