The Solar Impulse Foundation and Cleantech Group come together to accelerate sustainable innovation

The two organizations have announced a strategic partnership during the Cleantech Forum San Francisco.

Humanity faces an environmental challenge, the scale of which is unprecedented in history. Cleantech Group and Solar Impulse Foundation believe that innovation, technology, and ambitious policies are key engines to mitigate climate change and protect our environment.

With this shared understanding of the challenge and vision for how to tackle climate issues, the Cleantech Group and Solar Impulse Foundation are formalizing a long-term partnership to combine their respective skills and resources to advance sustainable solutions, clean technologies and action toward economic decisions that support a healthy environment.

In practical terms, the partnership will contain two main aspects:

• The Cleantech Group will help the Solar Impulse Foundation to find eligible cleantech companies and encourage them to join the #1000solutions Challenge, launched by Solar Impulse’s founder Bertrand Piccard.
• The Solar Impulse Foundation will assist the Cleantech Group in engaging with public and private stakeholders and connect them with cleantech innovation that can support their organizational goals.

Given the urgency of the transition needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, the overall purpose of the partnership is to collaboratively inspire and challenge heads of state, government officials and business leaders to take action, while at the same time, combine efforts to accelerate the deployment, commercialization and adoption of clean solutions.

“The magnitude of the environmental challenge we now face requires all stakeholders to come together and work toward a shared objective. I believe this partnership between the Solar Impulse Foundation and the Cleantech Group, two iconic and complementary organizations in the cleantech sector, will have a significant impact on our common goal to build a more sustainable future,” says Bertrand Piccard, founder of the Solar Impulse Foundation.

“The 2020s must be the decade when we build new and different alliances across industries, among nations and between governments and the people they serve. We need constructive dialogue to begin now in order for transformation to take place in time. This new alliance between Cleantech Group and the Solar Impulse Foundation gives us a strong starting point for these critical conversations,” says Richard Youngman, CEO of the Cleantech Group.