“With these 1,000 solutions, we show that ecology can be profitable”, assures Bertrand Piccard

A first in a non-stop balloon in 1999 with Briton Brian Jones, another aboard the Solar Impulse solar plane from March 2015 to July 2016… The
Swiss doctor and explorer Bertrand Piccard got us used to the exploits during his world tours.

The third, which will start in the coming weeks, will be less sporty. “I will use already existing means of locomotion” he assures in any case. The stakes, on the other hand, are just as important. Bertrand Piccard wants to embark on a world tour of the presidential palaces to present a guide that its foundation, Solar Impulse, has been preparing for four years. Inside ?
A thousand solutions – technologies, products, services… – unearthed around the world and which benefit both the environment and the economy. No need to choose between the two, repeats Bertrand Piccard, who intends to demonstrate, with this label, that ecology can be profitable. Switzerland answers questions from 20 minutes.

How do you see the Climate and Resilience bill – the last major environmental law in Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term – currently being examined in France?

Even today, many governments announce greenhouse gas reduction targets without having in mind the concrete solutions to be implemented to achieve them, nor how to create the conditions for large-scale use. these solutions. In particular, very ambitious regulations are needed to bring about its solutions. This is what this Climate and Resilience bill is trying to do, but it is just a start, and we can see that it is already complicated.

Many voices in the economic, industrial or political spheres have received this bill badly or tried to reduce certain measures. They did not understand that protecting the environment has become the best way to create jobs and develop the economy. Those who should applaud this future law with both hands are businesses, because the environmental regulations it carries will open up new markets, create new economic opportunities, push to be more efficient in the management of natural resources (energy, materials). first, waste…). These regulations also make it possible to remove the distortion of competition by penalizing companies that do not play the game of ecological transition.

Does your work at the Solar Impulse foundation ultimately come close to that of the Citizen’s Climate Convention, which was asked to identify solutions to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and of which inspire this Climate and Resilience Bill?

Above all, the Citizens’ Convention identified 150 key subjects on which to act. Our approach at the Solar Impulse Foundation is different. With a group of 350 to 420 experts, who have volunteered with us, we have embarked on the identification, analysis and labeling of solutions that meet environmental challenges. These are technologies, products, processes or services carried by start-ups as well as large companies and which cover the sectors of water, energy, construction, mobility, industry. and agriculture. We had three main selection criteria. The solution must exist, that is to say not be a vague idea for the future, but be already marketed or in the process of being so. It must also bring a real plus in the protection of the environment. Finally, it must be profitable for the company that sells it and an economic opportunity for the one who buys it, for example by allowing it to save money. This is the particularity of our work: we are the only label in the world that certifies the financial profitability of solutions that protect the environment. This shows that ecology can be profitable.

Have you made any great discoveries by listing these 1,000 solutions?

By launching this project, we were told repeatedly that it would be impossible to find 1,000 solutions that meet our three criteria. The first satisfaction is already to have achieved this, but we will continue. I am fascinated by the creativity shown by companies to take us towards a carbon-free world.

For 200 years, for example, we have let the heat of factories go through our chimneys without being able to enhance it. Eco-Tech Ceram, a French company, among the 1,000 that we have labeled, has developed a solution that allows this heat to be recovered, stored and re-injected into the plant circuit. Another great discovery:
Carbiolice, French too. She has developed an enzyme capable of making certain plastics 100% compostable, so that tomorrow, yoghurt pots could be thrown in the composters and no longer in the trash. It’s still
Waga Energy, French, again, which has developed a system that captures methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, released by public landfills – via the fermentation of detritus – to reinject it into the gas network. We could continue the list for a long time with
SunStyle solar tiles, the food supplement of
SOP [entreprise italienne] which reduces greenhouse gas emissions released by cows during digestion. And I am not talking about all the processes that make it possible to save water in agriculture, to have better insulation materials, more efficient heat pumps …

Do these 1,000 solutions allow you to be optimistic about the ability to limit global warming to below 2 ° C by 2100?

It will all depend on how quickly they are implemented. In any case, ideas abound. As much to increase the production of renewable energies, using the sun, wind, waste, waves, tides, etc., as to make us more efficient, that is to say more resource-efficient. We can very well imagine being able to achieve carbon neutrality by replacing 50% of the fossil fuels we use today with renewable energy and by filling the remaining 50% by reducing our energy waste.

Why is it so important that these solutions are both good for the environment and the economy?

Those who decide in the world come from financial, industrial, political circles… Their language is that of profit and job creation. If we prove to them that environmental protection also creates economic opportunities, we will have allies. If we tell them that it is expensive, that they will have to make sacrifices, we will make them adversaries.

Many NGOs are increasing the calls to limit the activity of certain sectors in order to respect climate commitments… Is there no room for this decrease in your eyes?

There is no room for economic decline. We have just seen what it can give with the Covid-19 crisis. As a result, millions more unemployed people, bankruptcies, people falling into poverty, increasing social inequalities …

On the other hand, yes, there is room for a decrease in waste and inefficiency in the use we make of natural resources. There is also a place, very certainly, for the reduction of excess, for example when we frantically consume products that are cheap but designed not to last. In many sectors, the prevailing logic remains to charge very low prices with the hope, for these companies, of making up for the quantities sold. We have to change that.

Should we also reason our use of the plane?

I find it a bit easy to constantly tackle the aviation sector, which represents around 3% of global CO2 emissions, when the impacts of textiles, which emit around 7%, are much more overlooked. But to return to the air, with the solutions identified today, there would already be material to reduce its carbon footprint by 20%, if they were applied quickly and on a large scale. The remaining 80% should be compensated, as of today, for example by including a carbon price in each ticket. Then, as technological developments make it possible to go further in reducing emissions, this compensation would decrease to zero, when flights by plane become carbon neutral.

It is not illusory. One can imagine, in the future, electric motors for light aircraft on short flights. For the long ones, hope is more in third generation biofuels [produits à partir de micro-algues] or
synthetic kerosene, produced from CO2 captured in the air and combined with hydrogen. The brake today is that these solutions are expensive, but we can hope that this will change when we manage to manufacture large quantities. In addition, it will allow the oil industry to diversify.

What is the advantage, for the carriers of the solutions that you have identified, of having this “Solar Impulse Foundation” label?

We do not have the means to financially help the companies that we label. On the other hand, our label ensures the profitability of the solutions they develop. Above all, we talk about them, we make them meet investors… This is the whole objective of the guide that we are going to release this summer and that I will present to as many heads of state and large companies as possible. Particularly at the COP26 in Glasgow, next November. But we could make a first launch, this summer, from France.