Finalists were chosen from among more than 200 candidates in the various categories of the Global Energy Awards. The winners will be announced at a dinner in New York on 2 December.

FCC's electric truck has been chosen as a finalist in the "Sustainable Innovation Technology of the Year" category; it will compete with 11 other global companies, including Italian utility Enel Ingegneria e Innovazione SPA, the US's Idaho National Laboratory, and Scotland's Aquamarine Power, a wave energy company.

FCC's hybrid-electric trucks, which are currently in use collecting municipal waste, have the capacity to collect 4-5 tonnes of waste per trip (on par with conventional diesel vehicles), serve around 12,000 people per truck/shift, can operate in narrow areas due to their reduced chassis width (1.9 metres at the widest point), boast excellent manoeuvrability due to their size and the front wheels' turn radius, and have very low levels of noise and fume emissions. There are currently 32 vehicles in service. This innovative technology has also been adapted and applied to street washing vehicles, the first two of which are scheduled to enter into service soon in Badajoz and Badalona. These will be the first commercial or industrial vehicles to provide municipal services in purely electric mode, offering comparable performance to their internal combustion engine counterparts.

The main difference between these innovative hybrid vehicles and the standard hybrids currently available on the market is that they provide a substantially superior service in terms of functionality, reliability and ROI. FCC's truck operates purely in electric mode during waste collection, when it is a zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV); it is fully autonomous in that it can charge its batteries in transit to waste disposal facilities.

FCC's hybrid trucks meet a market need with respect to municipal solid waste collection and street cleaning, and they are currently operational in the old quarters of several Spanish cities: Madrid, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Badalona and Badajoz. As a result of the constraints inherent in providing such services, until now no specifically-customised vehicle had been available for this purpose with the exhaust gas and sound emission conditions achieved by FCC.

In Barcelona, the company has 89 electric street-cleaning trucks with 1.5 tonne tipping hoppers and 15 hybrid-electric waste collection vehicles, i.e. almost 40% of the company's fleet in Barcelona is electric. The company also has electric trucks operating in other cities. FCC is the first company in the sector to have a fleet of more than 250 electric vehicles operating in Spain.

The company is firmly committed to electric vehicles and is implementing new waste collection services with purely electric 6.0 tonne vehicles, gradually extending its advanced proprietary technology in zero-emission vehicles.