We Have 1000+ Solutions to the Climate Crisis. Now what?

Bertrand Piccard

It's official: we made it! As of April 13, 2021, just four years after launching the 1000 Solutions Challenge, the Solar Impulse Foundation has reached (and even surpassed) its objective of selecting 1000 financially profitable solutions to protect the environment through its Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label.

These technologies, systems, devices, and products are clean, efficient, profitable... and available now! They reduce the environmental impact of construction and mobility, industry and agriculture, water and energy consumption, and ensure economic development and social prosperity for all -- not in a century, not in a decade, but today.

"For corporate leaders, the 1000+ Solutions should be envisioned as a helpful toolkit to help them achieve their environmental targets and boost their profitability. For investors, the 1000+ Solutions is a deal flow that they can use to make profitable investments."

While this threshold is a crucial step, it is not an end in itself. Not at all. From now on, we must do everything possible to ensure that these clean technologies are applied and installed as widely as possible. This portfolio, built after a thorough assessment of each solution, has to be considered a tool. How can this tool be used? Well, it has several purposes.

Solar Impulse: 1000+ Solutions to the environmental crisis - Let’s Go Beyond, April 13, 2021.

"...for politicians, the 1000+ Solutions serve as an indicator of what today's technologies can allow them to do and inform the adaptation of new laws and regulations."

The environmental transition will indeed shift the way businesses operate. For corporate leaders, the 1000+ Solutions should be envisioned as a helpful toolkit to help them achieve their environmental targets and boost their profitability. For investors, the 1000+ Solutions is a deal flow that they can use to make profitable investments. It would be ridiculous to launch the ecological transition without having those who finance the economy on board. And many clean technologies need investments to develop and scale their environmental advantage.

"...this is about boosting your earnings, pleasing your investors and shareholders, and creating jobs."

And last but not least, for politicians, the 1000+ Solutions serve as an indicator of what today's technologies can allow them to do and inform the adaptation of new laws and regulations. Indeed, the legal framework must be modernized urgently. It is still based on outdated systems and allows people to pollute and waste when, in fact, they could be doing so much better and with no additional costs. While it is important to convince individuals and businesses to embrace clean technologies, we will only boost the adoption of technologies at the rate and speed necessary to meet the Paris Agreement by modernizing legislation.

The profitability aspect of this endeavor is crucial because my message would be irrelevant if I were asking businesses to protect the environment by giving up on profit or for politicians to reduce carbon emissions by embracing degrowth and destroying jobs. These solutions propose exactly the opposite: this is about boosting your earnings, pleasing your investors and shareholders, and creating jobs.

"...discover how ecology and the economy can be reconciled and to embrace the greatest economic opportunity of the century."

But what exactly does "profitable solutions" mean? Our labeling process for profitability has two aspects: 1) The ability of a solution to provide an economic benefit to the customer, and 2) The ability to generate profits, even in the short term, for the vendor. All of this must come in addition to a clear benefit to the environment.

Solar Impulse: WeNow, your eco-driving coach, April 5, 2019.

One example is WeNow, a sensor installed in cars that gives eco-driving tips to drivers and reduces their consumption by 25%. WeNow is used by companies with large fleets of vehicles and offers potentially significant economic and environmental gains. Eco-Tech Ceram and Waga Energy are other perfect examples: the former recovers, stores, and re-injects waste heat from factories into the manufacturing process; the latter captures methane from landfills and converts it into usable energy. There are 20,000 landfills in the world and as many opportunities.

These are just three samples from our portfolio. There are more than a thousand others. For this reason, I am inviting all political decision-makers that gathered by President Biden at the Leaders Summit on Climate to discover how ecology and the economy can be reconciled and to embrace the greatest economic opportunity of the century.