Bertrand Piccard: We need to speak of solutions, not problems

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- Everything is there to make projects such as Solar Impulse the new normal -

The Solvay Group organized a film screening of ‘The Impossible World Tour’ on the 5^th of September in Brussels, followed by discussions and a Q&A session. The evening was all about energy. The panelists including Bertrand Piccard, Jean Pierre Clamadieu (CEO of Solvay) and Commissioner Carlos Moedas radiated inspiration and hope into the audience. When asked why he started this project, Bertrand Piccard, a UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador, replied that Solar Impulse can “bring positive emotions, inspiration and cause a paradigm shift” in the way we produce, distribute and consume energy.

Between March 2015 and end July 2016, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg flew around the world with no fuel, in a solar powered aircraft. It sounds like science fiction, but with Solar Impulse, a flying laboratory full of clean technologies, it has become the present. As Piccard said, it’s “the rest of the world that is in the past”. It seems that everything is there to make it happen. According to the Head of the UN Environment Brussels Office, Ulf Bjornholm, “the Sustainable Development Goals are the best plan, because we know where we want to go”.

“The new freedom is the freedom from non-renewables” - The clean technologies used on the aircraft can be used on the ground and reduce 50% of our world’s consumption. We have the ability to go beyond limits, though as acknowledged by European Commissioner for Research and Innovation, Carlos Moedas, the political world is slow to change and has drifted away from the citizens it is meant to represent. However, he believes that science is the way to get back to the citizens and create the drive to move toward a more sustainable future. Building on the success of Solar Impulse, the team has now established the World Alliance for effective solutions, which brings together governments, NGOs and even individuals in the hope of innovating the way we use energy. As put by the Commissioner Moedas: “Change is about collaboration and working together”.