Bertrand Piccard, who flew a Solar Impulse plane around the globe powered only by the sun, wants to turn years of research into an international platform for hi-tech startups – to make the world “cleaner and richer”. Andreas Weitzer interviewed him.

While I wait for my guest, Bertrand Piccard, on the sun-lit terrace of the Four Seasons Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco, I cannot but marvel at the lush gardens full of blossoming bushes and song birds, lined by a canopy of lofty palm trees. Some 30,000 delegates have come to town to attend the 22nd UN Climate Change Conference.

Their task: to flesh out the roadmap for the Paris Agreement 2015, where 197 nations had decided to give their best to slow the devastating rise of world temperatures. Their work was overshadowed by the advent of a new US administration, which threatened to tear up the agreement and to denounce climate change as a hoax and an attack on America’s “greatness”.

The mood during the two weeks of the conference was subdued to say the least, and countries which had long been lobbied by the US to take part in climate efforts, like China, India or Saudi Arabia, were shocked.

Bertrand PiccardBertrand Piccard

With his round-the-world solar flights, launched in 2015 and completed last August, Piccard is now the undisputed poster boy for green technology. In tandem with André Borschberg, their Solar Impulse planes circumnavigated the globe without a single drop of fuel.

Flying at an average speed of 77km/h, these silent albatrosses covered a distance of 43,000 kilometres, thereby breaking records: by crossing the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Hawaii – 8,924km in five days and five nights – Borschberg completed the longest and furthest solo flight ever flown by a plane. While Piccard, cruising from Hawaii to San Francisco and from New York to Seville, broke altitude records for electrical planes reaching a height of 9,235 metres.

Piccard came to my table, his hand put forth, apologising for being late. When he dropped into the chair next to me smiling winningly, his eyes sparkling with energy, I had to admit to myself that he quite looked the part of the modern-day explorer. Clad in the same black pilot uniform like his mostly female and very pretty entourage, springy step, firm handshake, he had the swagger of someone who thinks ‘impossible’ is not a fact but an opinion.

In his case this comes with a Swiss family tradition: his grandfather Auguste Piccard, inspiration for the cartoon character Professor Calculus, was the first man to fly into the stratosphere. Piccard’s father Jacques set deep-sea records in a self-constructed bubble, eventually reaching the Mariana Trench, at a depth of 11,000 metres – the deepest point of the Pacific Ocean. This was legacy that must have weighed heavily on Bertrand, who was neither a scientist nor a pilot.

We need to embrace clean technologies, not because they are ecological but because they are logical. Even if climate change didn’t exist, energy efficient technologies make sense. They create jobs, generate profits and boost economic development. And yes, they also reduce CO2 emissions and protect our natural resources

Living for all his life in Lausanne, Switzerland, married, father of three daughters, he trained first as a medical doctor and psychiatrist, specialising in medical hypnosis. His extracurricular activities would soon prove adrenergic, rather than hypnotic: he became European hang-glider champion in 1985, winner of the first transatlantic balloon race in 1992 and eventually the first man to fly non-stop around the world in a balloon Phileas-Fogg-style, which took him less than 20 days, not 80 days like Jules Verne’s utopic, Victorian traveller.

“Our solar planes had a 97 per cent energy utilisation rate, while a car can use just 27 per cent of the fuel energy it consumes,” he fires off, describing then in dazzling detail the engineering feats of 10 years of development for his solar enterprise. He seems to revel in the wonders of science and always enjoys telling the tale of a better future based on technology. “We need to embrace clean technologies not because they are ecological but because they are logical. Even if climate change didn’t exist, energy efficient technologies make sense. They create jobs, generate profits and boost economic development. And yes, they also reduce CO2 emissions and protect our natural resources.”

He does not expect mankind to walk in hair shirts to prevent climate Armageddon. “Take the new cooling technology put into place by Dallas Fort Worth Airport. They use off-peak energy to cool down glycol which then feeds the airconditioning systems in the heat of the day. Just think,” and he starts to scribble fever curves on a piece of paper, “how much electricity generation we could save and how much more wind and solar we could fully utilise if we could cut peak demand by just 20 per cent.”

With a triumphant smile he scratches out all the peaks of his graph and puts the drawing in front of me. “Keep this paper. One day they will all say it was that simple!”

Piccard sees himself not only as a flight pioneer, but as a “global influencer”. This may sound a wee-bit boastful, but the list of corporations he could line up as sponsors for Solar Impulse reads like the who’s-who of Swiss industry: Solvay, ABB, Schindler, Bayer/Covestro, Omega, Swiss Re and Swisscom, to name but a few.

The Lausanne Institute for Technology worked on the project, as did France’s jet maker Dassault and the European Space Agency. Prince Albert of Monaco, a personal friend, accommodated the Mission Control Centre, where a team of weathermen, mathematicians, air traffic controllers, engineers and service technicians was monitoring Piccard’s and Borschberg’s solar Odyssey around the clock.

Now, with mission accomplished, the flying doctor wants to turn the accumulated expertise of 10 years of research, involving a multitude of companies, into an international platform for hi-tech startups. His World Alliance for Clean Technologies should network for and support hopefuls in the fields of energy, environment and health.

“I want to make the world cleaner, more efficient and richer,” he beams, getting up for his next meeting. Modesty is a virtue, they say. But it will never get you as far as this ballooning PR genius. What a doctor, I wonder, while I watch him and his crew getting into their limousines. Perhaps, he could see the new President-elect of the United States and prescribe some strong remedy?

Andreas Weitzer is a journalist based in Malta who writes for Conde Nast and other leading publications.

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