“I’m fed up with eco-pessimism. Wherever we look, climate action has never been so urgent, and yet so divisive. I want to restore hope and encourage action with a spectacular new adventure.” True to the adventurer he has been, is and will continue to be, Bertrand Piccard is relaunching a wild project, still up in the air, with Climate Impulse.
His idea? A non-stop circumnavigation of the globe in eight days in a green hydrogen aircraft, starting in 2028, following on from his last exploit with Solar Impulse at the end of July 2016. The plane, which was brought back to Switzerland by Cargolux, has since been sold to a startup in 2019, for the purposes of empowerment and monitoring the planet, according to an investigation by Swissinfo.
“Climate Impulse is in spirit and in practice the heir to the Breitling Orbiter, Solar Impulse and its foundation, dedicated to identifying and promoting clean and efficient solutions that are good for the environment and good for the economy. The Climate Impulse aircraft is the child of this vision, and will be living proof that we can do better with less, taking this message around the world in 10 days. The intention is to revolutionise the skies and aviation while making a lasting contribution to the ecological transition”, explained the entrepreneur, who will take engineer Raphaël Dinelli on board in his adventure. “I intend, as we have done and will continue to do with the foundation, to spark a global movement, to give hope, to present solutions and to put the pioneering spirit at the forefront of climate action.”
Green hydrogen refers to hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water (H2O), using electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, hydroelectric, etc. This production method is considered ‘green’ because it does not emit carbon dioxide (CO2) or other greenhouse gases during the production process, unlike traditional methods of producing hydrogen based on fossil fuels.
Behind this commitment, the global movement has in fact already been underway since 2010. Last September saw the first test flight of the European Heaven project, which used electric hydrogen--quite the difference from the green hydrogen that Piccard plans to use--to get around various technical constraints such as the weight of the tanks that would have to be carried. Hydrogen extended the plane’s range from 700km to 1,500km over a three-hour flight. But the developments in this project, which brings together H2FLY and its partners Air Liquide, Pipistrel Vertical Solutions, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), EKPO Fuel Cell Technologies and the Fundación Ayesa, were aimed more at marketing a fuel cell.
Text originally published in French by and translated for Delano