This Man Found 1,650 Ways to Turn a Profit While Decarbonizing

Ambition is not a dirty word—especially if you’re Bertrand Piccard. The explorer, psychiatrist, and environmentalist aims to “promote sustainability through spectacular actions” to prove that a cleaner future is possible. During 2015 and 2016, he famously circumnavigated the globe in a solar-powered airplane, Solar Impulse, to show off the potential of renewables.

But even more ambitious was what he attempted after he landed. He tasked his foundation with demonstrating that environmental protection and economic profit can go hand in hand. The goal was to find 1,000 interventions that can protect the planet while also making money, shattering the argument that pursuing sustainability must come at a cost.

“The goal is really to show that we can be much more efficient, that we can develop the economy, but in a clean way,” Piccard says. It’s going well. Since the foundation started its project eight years ago, it has logged 1,650 solutions—processes, products, materials, and devices—that can make an environmental difference at a profit. They encompass nearly every field—from water and energy to agriculture and IT—and the foundation is working to bring them to governments, cities, and businesses.

Ahead of speaking at the WIRED x Octopus Energy Tech Summit in Berlin on October 10, Piccard sat down with WIRED to discuss how Solar Impulse’s program works, who’s responsible for making positive change happen, and why the narrative around net zero needs to change.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WIRED: Tell us about these profitable solutions. They sound almost too good to be true.

Bertrand Piccard: Sure. To be selected, a solution needs to exist already. And it needs to be credible, scalable, and profitable, and to protect the environment.

So for example, there is a system of steel staples produced by a Belgian company called Bekaert. Mix these inside concrete when building and you don’t need all these heavy and expensive iron armatures. With the staples you keep the concrete more compact and end up using less concrete and metal, producing less CO₂ and pollution, and making more profit.

Another example are LED lamps that you can use for public lighting, where you can have a solar panel and battery. The lighting is then off-grid. You don’t need to dig along the street to put in wires. If you do that, you save 37 percent of the energy bill of the city.