Bertrand Piccard on Innovation, Sustainability, and Leadership
Swiss aeronaut, and chair of the Solar Impulse foundation Bertrand Piccard speaks at the Elysee presidential palace in Paris on August 23, 2019, after taking part in a meeting of the G7 Advisory Council for Equality between Women and Men with French President and civil society representatives as part of the ‘Day of Dialogue’. (Photo by GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP)
From the Breitling Orbiter to Solar Impulse: A Visionary’s Journey to a Cleaner World
Bertrand Piccard FRSGS is a Swiss explorer, psychiatrist, and environmentalist. Along with Brian Jones, he was the first to complete a non-stop balloon flight around the globe in a balloon named Breitling Orbiter 3.
Your incredible journey with the Breitling Orbiter marked a significant milestone in aviation and exploration. Can you describe the moment you felt the most challenged during this voyage, and how you overcame it?
I would say that it wasn’t a moment but the entire Breitling Orbiter saga.
Breitling Orbiter 1 had the most beautiful take-off, with so many enthusiastic spectators shouting to encourage us. But it ended in the Mediterranean Sea after 6 hours because of a fuel leak. It was the worst failure of my life. I remember my daughter refusing to go to school for fear of being laughed at.
The second attempt offered the most beautiful flight: several days at very low altitude above India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, in contact with the population cheering at the balloon. But there was not enough wind to continue the trip, and we landed in Myanmar. Nevertheless, I set the world record for duration, with nine days of flight. This gave hope to the team, especially since, during this time, all my competitors like Richard Branson and Steve Fossett were also continuing to fail.
In 1999, the Breitling Orbiter 3 was redesigned with the help of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, improved thermodynamically, with a new fuel system and a new co-pilot. And then, we succeeded. It was a perfect flight from start to finish.
Every 21st of March, I remember that success doesn’t come only from the wind; it’s also about dreams, perseverance, and trying one more time than the number of failures.
You’ve been a part of two historic flights: one around the world in a balloon and the other in a solar-powered aircraft. How do you prepare mentally and physically for such pioneering endeavours?
It entailed completing various simulations and virtual training sessions.
These virtual flights and strategy simulations allowed me to learn how to respond in authentic weather conditions. The flight simulator, which consisted of five screens arranged around the cockpit, placed me in position for a 72-hour flight, fully equipped and strapped in as I would be in reality.
I also used self-hypnosis to prepare myself in advance for reacting in extreme situations without any panic.
With the Solar Impulse project and now Climate Impulse, you’ve transitioned from using existing technology innovatively to pushing the boundaries of new technologies. What drives your commitment to renewable energies and clean technologies?
My main drive is frustration. I’m angry at those who lock people, especially young people, into an anxiety that ruins their ability to act. As much as an open-air laboratory, Climate Impulse represents a battle against defeatism and scepticism, which lead people to believe that there is no way out other than sacrifice and regression. So this debate goes far beyond aviation. It’s about the mindset we should adopt: that of the pioneer who puts solutions before problems, realism before ideologies, and refuses to consider anything we don’t yet know as impossible.
You often speak about the “qualitative economy” that harmonises ecological sustainability with economic growth. How can businesses, especially in the aviation sector, implement this philosophy practically?
The basis of a qualitative economy is to create jobs and develop the economy by replacing what pollutes the environment with what protects it. Instead of selling quantity that creates pollution, waste, and climate change, we can sell efficiency that allows us to obtain better results with lower consumption of energy and resources.
In the qualitative economy that I consider indispensable, it becomes a market opportunity to make industry, agriculture, mobility, and resource management more efficient. In addition, the products we buy would be of higher quality and last longer, which makes their use more profitable. The quantities produced would be smaller, but companies’ profit margins would be higher because the selling price could be increased. Everyone would be able to buy less because they wouldn’t need to buy as often. In short, it would be a general “move upmarket” for everyone.
As a psychiatrist, how has your understanding of human psychology influenced your approach to dealing with global challenges and promoting sustainable technologies?
To achieve change, you need to stimulate the desire to change by showing that life will be better afterwards and giving confidence in the ability to change. I think we need to show how much we can accomplish with the technology that exists today to protect the environment. A lot of people think that there is nothing left to do, but the 1,600 solutions identified by the Solar Impulse Foundation, and now Climate Impulse, are great platforms to show how to implement solutions. People can also be pioneers at their own level. It is in this spirit that I embarked on this new adventure.
Coming from a family of legendary explorers, how has this heritage shaped your career choices and your philosophy towards exploration and innovation?
Of course, my father and grandfather inspired me. But you have to understand that, for me, everything they did was completely normal. When I went to the movies to see Walt Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1967, I looked at my father, who was sitting next to me, and I thought, “I have a Captain Nemo at home!” In the 1960s, we were living in Florida because my father was designing a submarine for a company that was making NASA’s lunar module, on which he invited an engineer from the space agency to prepare for a long-duration mission.
At that time, I was able to attend several Apollo rocket launches, meet astronauts from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programmes, but also Wernher von Braun, Charles Lindbergh, Jacques Mayol… Being in contact with all these explorers gave me a certainty: I too wanted to have a life of exploration.
Through the Solar Impulse Foundation, you’ve identified over 1,500 “Efficient Solutions.” What are some of the most promising innovations that could significantly impact our approach to climate change?
There is no silver bullet, but the miracle comes from the evidence that there are so many systems, products, materials, devices, and software that can make our world more efficient in the fields of water, energy, mobility, construction, industry, agriculture, waste management, circular economy, and IT.
You can store intermittent renewable energy in hydrogen, compressed air, or pumped-storage energy transfer stations, as well as lithium batteries, especially those of electric vehicles when they are not running. Other innovative means exist, such as recycled ceramic bricks that store heat at temperatures between 500°C and 1000°C, or Energy Vault, which has developed a 120-metre-high crane that lifts concrete blocks when there is too much electricity and lets them come down, generating electricity when needed.Another labelled solution, called Dramix, replaces iron armatures in concrete with steel staples, making the construction stronger and reducing the need for natural resources.
Most of the solutions are common sense, thanks to technical improvements. Imagine polluting and costly waste transformed into construction stones or gravel, or being recycled into new thermal and acoustic insulation for energy-efficient buildings, reducing energy bills for the most modest families.
You can also reduce your heating or cooling bills thanks to heat pumps replacing conventional systems that are inefficient. The same goes for lighting systems if you use LED instead of incandescent bulbs.
It’s an endless list of solutions!
With your latest project, Climate Impulse, focusing on hydrogen-powered aeroplanes, what do you envision for the future of aviation in terms of sustainability?
We can gain efficiency by modernising operations in flight and in airports. But we have to be more ambitious than that and change the type of fuel. Climate Impulse is like a demonstrator of what is possible, to shake the minds of sceptical people and promote the use of green hydrogen. Today, there is not enough production of green hydrogen because there are not enough customers, and not enough customers because there is not enough production. We have to break this vicious circle and inspire much more hydrogen production and consumption. It’s crucial to undertake this endeavour in a way that captures attention and sparks interest globally, not only for aviation but also for heavy transportation like trains, ships, and trucks, as well as for the steel and fertiliser industries. And during the transition phase, Sustainable Aviation Fuels will have a role to play.
What role do you believe global leaders and governments should play in supporting and implementing clean technologies on a large scale?
I believe the role of politicians is to modernise the standards, the norms, and the requirements of our legal frameworks in order to create a need to pull efficient solutions to the market. Innovation often needs to be pushed with grants, incubators, and pitches. But there also needs to be a legal requirement to use them. If we had regulations with new standards and norms that create the need to be cleaner and more efficient, what would happen? It would automatically pull all these innovations onto the market and make them accessible to everyone.
Throughout your adventures and initiatives, what has been the most valuable lesson about life and leadership that you have learned?
I grew up in a family of explorers, where I was taught that the impossible doesn’t exist in reality. It only exists in the minds of people who haven’t yet understood how to do it. Therefore, we need to think in all directions, embrace innovation, and constantly push boundaries. We have to inspire the young ones and teach them to do exactly that: to find their place in this transition and to understand that much more is possible than they think.