Pilot, pioneer and now influencer Bertrand Piccard has parked the legendary Solar Impulse to take on an even greater challenge: finding 1,000 more solutions to save the climate.
Transformation does not happen on its own, but through the support, involvement and sharing of a plurality of ideas and individuals. It is for this reason that Bertrand Piccard, the man who managed to circumnavigate the globe aboard a fully electric aircraft – Solar Impulse –, has decided not to rest on his laurels, but instead to make himself and his resources available to help hundreds of ideas come to light. He has thus created the World alliance for efficient solutions, a kind of spin-off of the Solar Impulse foundation, whose goal is to select 1,000 solutions – #1000solutions – capable of protecting the environment in a way that is beneficial for people and for the planet. This goal, according to the pilot, is to be achieved by the next conference, COP 24, to be held in Poland.
"Very often the solutions already exist, but they are hidden within small startups or in university research laboratories and cannot reach the market to be available to everyone," Piccard declared at the launch of the alliance, which took place on 14 November in Bonn, Germany, during COP 23, the United Nations conference on climate change. "This is why governments have a great responsibility: they must strengthen and give more space to these solutions and bring them to market. We are now at a turning point. Previously, these smart solutions were too expensive, not affordable for many. Now, on the other hand, they are not only affordable, but they save and generate hundreds of billions of dollars" and contribute to putting innovation at the service of the fight against global warming.
To achieve all this, Piccard has created a fairly straightforward chain: after selecting the 1,000 most cutting-edge solutions, the World alliance for efficient solutions commits to supporting and promoting them before decision-makers around the world, demonstrating how they can help governments and businesses adopt ambitious energy plans while meeting environmental objectives at various levels.
Piccard, together with his fellow Swiss citizen André Borschberg, had succeeded in the feat of circumnavigating the globe in the second version of Solar Impulse without using a single drop of fuel, running entirely on electricity. Departing from Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, on 9 March 2015, Solar Impulse completed its round-the-world journey in sixteen legs on 26 July 2016.
But Piccard went further: "Today, better is synonymous with efficient, it is synonymous with something that is capable of giving a great boost to sustainable development. And Solar Impulse alone was no longer enough." On the contrary, in order to continue making sense, it needs to be accompanied by a thousand ideas capable of demonstrating that the current status quo based on a linear, fossil-fuel economy is no longer on the agenda, is off topic, represents the past. To step into the future, all it takes is opening the door to the thousands of basements and makeshift laboratories of brilliant researchers who hold the answers to the most urgent questions threatening the Earth.
