The Solar Impulse Foundation and New Energy Nexus join forces to scale cleantech businesses

“Thirty years ago, we had a chance to save the planet”.

This powerful and tragic statement was made by Nathaniel Rich in a brilliant piece published this summer in The New York Times: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change. How frustrating to think that we could have done something to stop the deadly path we’re on… But we didn’t.

At the Solar Impulse Foundation, we believe that today, we are once again at a moment in history where we can, and must act. Since the 90’s, scientific progress has allowed us to invent clean technologies, processes, products and services. Entrepreneurs have built cleantech companies all around the world that could help us drastically reduce our CO2 emissions, if scaled now. The more we help these companies to grow, the faster we can transition to clean energy. So, what are waiting for?

In 2015, at the UN climate talks held in Paris, WWF Climate solver issued an Entrepreneurs Call to Action Statement. This declaration “urged world leaders to increase their climate action efforts and invest in climate and energy entrepreneurs and solutions.” It was signed by 121 clean energy companies from 25 countries.

Following this initiative, New Energy Nexus launched a few months ago the Speedwell Entrepreneurs Call To Action urging even more entrepreneurs, incubator managers, and organizers of startup ecosystems to sign onto their call. The declaration stated: “We are some of the thousands of cleantech business women and men, founders and starters, workers and builders, commonly known as entrepreneurs, from all corners of the world that have the solutions ready to help our customers to lower their cost, achieve better performance and improve their lives without the need of harmful fossil fuel emissions”. The Statement has been signed by 399 startups and organizations from 55 countries and will be presented on the world stage at  GCAS, on September 13th.

These two statements, in 2015 and 2018, have made the voices of entrepreneurs heard and prove that there are countless startups willing to stand for climate action. Now New Energy Nexus is handing over this action to the Solar Impulse Foundation with our 1000 Solutions Challenge. We are calling all the entrepreneurs who have signed this Call-To-Action to join our World Alliance for Efficient Solutions and be part of the 1000 Solutions to make sure that their voices continue to be heard and that entrepreneurs stay at the forefront of this mouvement. By bringing them to decision-makers in governments, institutions and business leaders around the world, we’ll show that there are efficient solutions, they are profitable and it’s time to implement them.

“We’re handing over the Speedwell Entrepreneurs’ Call-to-Action to the Solar Impulse Foundation to carry on the torch and take it forward to the COP24 in Poland and beyond to ensure that the entrepreneurs’ voice is part of the conversation around climate solutions” 

stated Danny Kennedy, Co-founder and President of New Energy Nexus.

“There are solutions everywhere, but people do not know them. So it is important to have partners with whom we identify more and more solutions and we have experts to identify which are the best solutions. With Nexus I think there is a fantastic possibility of increasing the network, going faster into identifying the solutions and assessing them.” 

stated Bertrand Piccard, founder of the Solar Impulse Foundation.

Along with New Energy Nexus’ goal of replicating the California cleantech model in other countries to accelerate 100’000 startups in cleantech by 2030, we all aim to scale clean, efficient and profitable solutions. If we don’t, we might once again miss our chance to “save the planet”. Through this collaboration, we will work together to make sure entrepreneurs’ solutions are known to those who need them, such as governments and businesses with ambitious targets, and that these entrepreneurs benefit from New Energy Nexus’ know-how in supporting and funding cleantech startups around the world.