Soaring renewables – hope for the climate

Piccard and Solar Impulse co-founder Andre Borschberg address WEF's Davos meeting Keystone

Failure to mitigate and adapt to climate change has been listed as the number one threat in the world, according to the World Economic Forum's risk report. But Davos has heard that there is hope of this threat being averted.

Regular attendee Al Gore, former US Vice President turned environmental campaigner, gave an upbeat address to delegates on Wednesday. If the message from the Paris COP21 climate summit is being taken so seriously in Davos, then there is a greater chance that targets will be implemented, he said.

Swiss adventurer Betrand Piccard, initiator of the Solar Impulse solar powered aircraft project, gave business delegates another reason to take up green technology – it will end up costing you less. The same incentive applies to everyone, for that matter, according to Piccard.

Solar Impulse is currently grounded midway through its round-the-world flight, but the achievements it has made so far prove that renewable energy is ripe to replace outdated energy models, Piccard told delegates.

“We still have technologies for energy that are 100 years old,” he said. The combustion engine loses 73% of its energy and light bulbs 95%. “The origin [of climate problems] is that we lose an incredibly high amount of energy because of outdated technologies.”

By contrast, the engines on Solar Impulse are 97% energy efficient. That equates to a lower energy bill and more money in people’s pockets.

“A few years ago I would have been very embarrassed to come on stage in Davos to talk about climate change,” Piccard added. “The protection of the environment was always presented as something expensive, boring and threatening our lifestyle.”

“We were asking people to make a sacrifice: to have less mobility, less comfort, less economic development. Today it is possible to fly around the world in an airplane that can fly forever with no fuel. This shows that without fuel, we can do better than with fuel.”