#1000Solutions
Q7
With your Solar Impulse Foundation, you have identified more than 1500 clean and profitable solutions- what big projects are you currently working on and what's next for you personally?
At the moment I'm working on two big projects. One is a solar airship, like a Zeppelin, 150 metres long and fully solar, that will be able to drive electric engines and fly around the world non-stop only on renewable energy with absolutely no fuel. This will be a first because the Breitling Orbiter models all burned some propane. Solar Impulse burned no fuel, but even though it was a non-stop flight we had to make some stop-overs. Therefore, the next obvious step is to fly non-stop around the world with zero emissions and just renewable energy. That would be a fantastic journey to speak about in schools, universities and governments and promote all these solutions to protect the environment. The second project that will likely happen a couple of years later, is to fly around the world in a hydrogen airplane, a two-seater, fully clean. You will now probably say that I always fly around the world, and that's true. I love to fly around the world because it's the ultimate flight. You cannot do more and cannot do better! And if you want to prove the maturity of a new clean and sustainable technology, I think it's the best way to do it. So this is what I'm currently working on.
The Solar Impulse Foundation is an environmental non-profit project which was founded in 2003 by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The foundation is known for its round-the-world flight in an entirely solar powered plane completed in 2016, as well as the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution label awarded to 1000 solutions that are both profitable and good for the planet.