Meet the medical doctor and explorer Bertrand Piccard - famous for his solar flight around the world - talks about his firm believe in technology to save the environment. He explains why he will travel the world to present 1,000 solutions for decision-makers, that can protect the environment in a profitable way.
Meet the medical doctor and explorer Bertrand Piccard - famous for his solar flight around the world - talks about his firm believe in technology to save the environment. He explains why he will travel the world to present 1,000 solutions for decision-makers, that can protect the environment in a profitable way.
Welcome to Climate Action News brought to you by we don't have time and a sustainable tomorrow, my name is Catalina or stato son, and I'm the host of this program. The Tom pika is the initiator and visionary behind Solar Impulse, the first airplane that flew around the globe powered by the sun. In 2021, he will deliver 1000 sustainable solutions, he selected two decision makers, encouraging them to adopt more ambitious environmental targets and energy policies that can be countered. wonderful to have you with us here on the program. I'd like to ask you, how has your work with Solar Impulse what has been the most important achievements so far? I initiated the Solar Impulse projects to demonstrate that impossible things or what people believe is impossible, can in fact be achieved by renewable energies and clean technologies. It's a way to put positive emotions around clean technologies, and to show that it is not a way to go backward. If you take care of the environment. It's the opposite the way to go forward to the future. And the most important winning so far, what would you say that those are? It is clearly now the work that our success with airplane allows us to do, which is to select 1000, technologies, systems, products, processes, that can protect the environment and at the same time, generate economical profit and create jobs. So my goal with the sauropods foundation today. And I think, really, the credibility was set thanks to the airplane going around the world and then notoriety and now people know us and understand what we do. The goal is really to have these 1000 solutions as proves that the protection of the environment can be financially profitable. And to bring these solutions as a portfolio, to the key decision makers, to heads of governments heads of state, big institutions, big leaders of Corporation in order to give them the tools that they needed to set much more ambitious energy policies and environmental targets. And how would you do this, will you will you be flying around the world again, doing this? It will not be with Solar Impulse. Again, because this was a one off, it was a revolutionary prototype, it was first in the aviation history. So the goal now is to travel from one head of state to another, to get the meetings and to give them the portfolio or the solutions together with a delegation of cooperation leaders, with the media, really in order in order to, to show demonstrate and prove that the tools are available today to fight climate change, to protect the environment to fight against pollution. And they would even say that in a lot of these political meetings, the goal is to demonstrate that even if there was no climate change, even if there was no problem for the environment, it would be logical, as much as ecological to use the new technologies, because they are more efficient. They managed to save resources to save energy, they open new economic, in markets, new industries, you know, all what you can do with the waste, what you can do in circular economy, all these new technologies that are built by startups, all this is a fantastic market that we can open. And they would even say that it is the market of the century to replace what is polluting today, because it is inefficient. With modern technologies that are efficient, everybody will win, the companies was selling the products are going to win. And consumers were going to use more efficient products are also going to win. And by the way, it protects the environment. So it's really a win win win. And we have to demonstrate prove it promoted. And today I'm very happy because we have today 482 of the solutions we have received the label of the Solar Impulse foundation efficient solution program. We have 400 experts for doing these assessments. So basically it is 482 proofs that the protection of the environment can be financially profitable. Well, that's that's really impressive. How is your work affected by the pen? Today the foundation is working from home, all the people are on their phone on their computers. And I have to admit that we have the best month in the history of the solar panels Foundation, the highest number of new solutions that have been labeled was in April of this year, the startups have a little bit more time to submit their, their their their phones, their their solutions, the experts have a little bit more time. So really, the pandemic was not a problem on that level, the pandemic was a real problem for a lot of other situations. But in this case, it was not. So when when do you think you'll be able to start not start this endeavor and, and go visit and contact the decision makers, I hope by the first half of 2021, next year, a little bit less than than a year. And what is interesting is that even today, we have governments have already contacted us, like like Scotland, like friends, Belgium, Luxembourg, and they are already asking us to help them to implement solutions that can protect the environment and at the same time, can relaunch the economic growth that has been destroyed by the by the pandemic. So it's very interesting to see that. Of course, there are people who call to go back to the past. But there are quite a lot of people who are calling to have a better world after the crisis than we had before. And they are billions of dollars, trillions of dollars were put on the market to help the economy to recover. But of course, this money has to be used to make a better, more efficient and cleaner world in the future. So the solutions that have been selected by the solid foundation in so many startups or sometimes also big companies around the world, are very, very valuable tools for this economic recovery. So we are now really even if we don't have the 1000 yet, and we have just the half, we're already working a lot with public authorities in order to help them I'm going to ask you a question that all all my guests get they get to do the questions are always the same. Because I like to see that the your brilliant mind, see how you addresses these two especially. And the first one goes like this, how do you see if if there was any learnings we can we can get from how we handle the pandemic into how we should and could be handling the climate crisis? Well, I think the pandemic is so bad, because our world was already fragile and unstable and fair and polluted before the crisis. And I heard a lot of people in the industry, who told me last year, we are on the edge of a recession. So it's not a surprise today that everything is collapsing, because everybody who can buy something has already bought it, and the other half of the population cannot afford buying something. So the economy was running flat, which is completely stupid, we should be able to give to the public to the consumers, better things more efficient, productive, more efficient technologies or devices. So they would replace what they use in an inefficient way by something that is efficient. So we see that the world before the pandemic was not running the way it should. What we can learn also is that we were far too dependent from other countries from the other side of the world. And you know why? Because of greed, just because of greed, in order to earn a few cents more on the product, there was a delocalization on the other side of the world where the salaries are lower. So what do we do in our western world, we create unemployment we localize where the people who have cheaper employment and when we have a crisis because of this greed, the supply chain is broken. So we were really doing exactly the what the common sense would never allow us to do, it was not good common sense. It will not we we have problems due to this because the we cannot have the deliveries etc, etc. Because of travel restrictions, etc. So now many, many people are in any industry, some people are in trouble because of the way we set up our economies. Exactly, exactly. If you depend too much on the outside if you delocalized too much. When there is a problem somewhere the entire system collapses. So we need to have much shorter circuits. We need to have circular economy, we need to have a situation to supply ourselves with the basic needs without depending on others. And I hope that it will be understood that as it is, in addition to the environmental problems, because of course, if you transport things all around the world, by aeroplanes, by ship, by trucks, and so on, you create a lot of pollutions, when you could very well produce much more locally. But of course, in some countries, producing more locally means producing at a little bit higher price. But it would, if you have a little bit higher prices, it's also because you give better salaries, which is a way to improve the standard of life. And the people who have better salaries, pay more taxes. So for the social redistribution, it's also an advantage. So we see that we have done very, very wrong before the crisis of the COVID. And I deeply hope that we will remember these learnings in order to do better after the crisis that then we did, that we did before. And you know, this is the the opportunity that lies in the crisis in every crisis in life. If you recover exactly what you had before the crisis, the crisis was useless. And the suffering used by the crisis was useless. If you recover in a better shape after then before, if you finish higher than before, if you have required you tools, new understanding new behaviors, new solutions, then the crisis was useful. So the jury's still out there on this one, right, we'll see what we learned. But that sounds very promising. From your perspective, indeed, you are. You're very much talking about innovation and technologies, and not so much about behavioral changes. Is there a risk when we focus as you do very much on technology as solving the climate crisis, that people just sit back and think, well, this is going to be all taken care of, by by new technology solutions. I will answer more as a psychiatrist and an explorer, because I'm both but this time, maybe more psychiatrist, what I've noticed is that most of the people are not keen to change their habits and their behaviors. So if you tell to people, you have to protect the environment, which means that we have to renounce to your mobility to your comfort, we need less growth, we need less traveling, we need less from everything, you will discourage the people, you will have all of them in against you. And I think this was the huge mistake of the Green Parties in the last 50 years, they were threatening the population telling showing them that protecting the environment was stressful, expensive and boring. We have to show the opposite. We have to tell to the people, you work to have a good life. Yes, you can keep your good life. But the technologies, the devices, the systems, the infrastructure that you are using for this good life have to be changed. They need to be more mother. If we had an electric mobility, if we had a way to store intermittent renewable energy in the batteries of the cars or in hydrogen, with well insulated houses, with LED lamps, with heat pumps with new industrial processes, we could we could already today divide by two the co2 emissions divided by two the pollution that we're creating on this planet, because we had in the past Society of waste of excessive consumption excessive. Today, if we can be more efficient, we would reuse half of the energy consumption, half of the food production, half of the resources that we extract from the ground, just because all these would be used in a more efficient way. So it is not the technology that will save the world. It is the way we can use this technology to be efficient to protect the environment. People watching this will probably some of them will be thinking well we have a scarcity of the minerals that needs to go into the batteries, etc, etc. What do you have to say about this in terms of electrification? And also I'm sure many people watching this will be asking themselves how about flying? I mean, you flew on a solar powered airplane. How can we go about flying again in a more in a well 100% Climate Neutral way? Is it there's going to be possible within the foreseeable future and how about About the battery capacity and the rare minerals, it's true that not everyone is going to fly on a regular and commercial basis with solar power like I did with Solar Impulse, that's for sure. But we should not forget that aviation is 3% 3% only of the problem of co2 emissions and energy consumption, roughly 7% is on the ground. 97% is much easier to target than aviation. So we should not stop. But the thing that is the most difficult, of course, we have to ask aviation to be more efficient direct route, constant descent approaches, system to build airports, better mix of biofuels and things like that, of goals. But we cannot say we cannot solve climate change because the radiation is difficult to handle. No, we have to start but by what we can handle in carbon neutral buildings is possible today. Not only possible, but cheaper to use, cheaper to use, if you have a house that is well insulated. With the heat pumps and solar panels, you pay less every year on your energy bill than if you have a house that is badly insulated. So you can really make it profitable. The batteries for the electric mobility, let's be very clear about that. The electric mobility, it's for me not a car with a battery, it's a battery with wheels, which is different, it will go on the street 5% of the time, and 95% of the time, the electric car will be connected to the grid, you know, with solar energy or wind energy when you have wind and solar and discharge the electricity on the grid when there is a peak of consumption. So the electric power is a private storage at the service of the community. If you see it like this, the environmental advantage is tremendous. So of course, we will have a few minds of cobalt or lithium in different countries, this has to be handled with human rights and with economical ecological rules. And that is not the case right now that we have proven that it's not the case now Not at all. And it has to be it has to be. And if we re localize a little bit, the things better, I tell you that the countries on the other side of the world will put their standards of human rights much higher in order to continue selling their products. But at the end, what do we want? Do we want a couple of lithium or cobalt mines here and there? Or do we want more degrees of temperature in the atmosphere, which is not a local problem to global problem. And I think we really have to do to make the trade off like that. And also there is innovation going on on creating batteries from other sources, then these rare, rare minerals with algae, etc, etc. So let's and we can store energy with hydrogen. This is something that has not yet reached the critical mass. And this is why it is still expensive. But we have to invest in hydrogen exactly like it has been invested in solar panels. And in batteries. The price has dropped dramatically, because a lot of people have produced it. The hydrogen industry is just at the beginning. And we have to push it dramatically in order to drop the price and make it accessible to everyone. Hydrogen is really a good way to store the energy from wind and solar sources. You come from a long line of innovators and explorers. Your grandfather was an explorer and your father and yourself of course. Where does your personal passion come from in doing what you're doing? And how do you sustain this passion in wanting to save the planet? Yes. You know, in my childhood, my role models were scientific explorers, were achieving the impossible. So it was the astronauts I met when I was a child American astronauts from mercury Gemini and Apollo program. Aviation pioneers like Charles Lindbergh, but of course also my father and my grandfather. My grandfather made the first flight ever in the stratosphere he invented actually the the pressurized capsule in order to show that it would be possible to fly at much higher altitude in thinner air where the fuel consumption would be lower. And his idea was already in 1931. To be more efficient to protect the environment, and then the 1960 my father made the diver the first dive to the deepest part in the ocean in the Mariana Trench 11 kilometers down. And the goal was to show that there was life in the deepest trenches where the government's wanted to drop their radioactive and toxic waste. So that was a huge milestone in the protection of the environment. So for me, exploration, science was always an inspiration. It was to protect the environment, it was to make life better. It was to motivate people to go to the best of themselves. And this is what I wanted. Also, when I made the first slide around the world in the balloon with Breitling, orbiter three balloon in 1999. And of course, Oracle's so Oracle's, maybe it's really the achievement of my life in the sense that I could put together a prediction of the environment, promotion of clean technologies and renewable energies, and the spirit of pioneering and exploration, which supports everything I I want to do in my life. Well, thank you for doing what you're doing, indeed. So I have the second question that I've always asked my guests. What does climate leadership mean to you? And do you have any good examples of climate leadership? I think we need leadership. And if we have real leaders, they will lead the way for climate, but also against pollution. Also, for a fairer world with less inequalities, with just better quality of life. And this is missing, what we need our leaders who are able to set a vision, explain this vision, and explain why we have to reach this vision and how we're going to do it. And it's not what the heads of states most of heads of data are doing. Now. They are not having a vision, they are managing the day to day, but they are not showing where to go and why we have to do it. Fortunately, there are a couple of examples. The King of Morocco, during pressive situation, the king of Morocco, Mohammed six, and set the goal of having 42% of renewable energy in his country by 2030. And he saw that it was too easy. Everybody was doing it so well that the goal would have rich easily. So he said, Okay, we're not putting 42 as a goal, we're putting 52% in order to really make a challenge that everybody could try to achieve. This is leadership. This is leadership. It's a real vision. And it's your vision that he can achieve. They can really achieve. The President Emmanuel Macron, clearly wants to change things. Maybe his problem is that he's not explaining enough why the changes have to happen. But he's a visionary in the sense that you really wants to change the system. He told me, I want to change the system, down the social level, economic level, industry level, environmental level. But of course, I need everyone to support me in order to reach this goal. So leaders sometimes exist. But they need to explain really well, what they have in mind in order to get the support of the population. Because the population and this is me, it's really a pity to see. But sometimes the population elects more easily. The heads of states who do nothing, because they don't disturb anyone. And when you have somebody who really wants to do something, everybody attacks him. Well, we've seen some examples of that, of course, globally, in the past years. Well, thank you so much for your work, but toppika and for joining us on this show. It'll be very fascinating to follow you when you said 2021 you will probably embark on your on your quest to present the 1000 ideas to save the planet. Well, best of luck to you. Thank you very much. Thank you. There for all of you viewers watching us. Thank you for coming to my show to the Climate Action News, one on one program, and it's brought to you by we don't have time and a sustainable tomorrow. And let's be back again for the next guest in a week. Bye bye for now.