Around the world AND emissions free

Ilham Kadri: Today, I am thrilled to be speaking with my good friend, Bertrand Piccard, one of the greatest explorers and pioneers of our time. Bertrand shows us over and over that the impossible is possible. He made us dream by flying around the world and we flew with him without burning a single drop of kerosene in a solar powered plane.
And I'm so proud that Solvay flew with him by providing 6,000 parts for his plane. And guess what? He made it around the world in just 23 days, faster than Jules Verne with his 80 days. Bertrand, thank you so much for being here today.

Bertrand Piccard: Ilham, it's such a pleasure to be able to speak with you. 

Rapid fire questions

Ilham Kadri: I thought we could start with some rapid fire questions. Are you ready?

Bertrand Piccard: I'm ready? Yes. Always excited.

Ilham Kadri: For your holidays, Bertrand, beach or mountains.

Bertrand Piccard: Both: beach in summer for kite surfing and mountain in winter for skiing.

Ilham Kadri: If you could travel back in time, Bertrand, and meet anyone, anyone who would it be?

Bertrand Piccard: I would like to meet all the big prophets of our time. Jesus Christ, Mohamad, Buddha, all these people who brought disruptive messages and changed the world each time they were living on earth. I think that would be fantastic to see the common value that they all brought because usually we see all the differences and it makes wars for religions. I would like to see what makes them all together in the same essential message.

Ilham Kadri: Wow. I didn't expect that answer. It's inspiring. 

Bertrand Piccard: No, you asked me Ilham, you asked me. 

Ilham Kadri: It's fabulous, it makes me think actually you're right. You know, imagine now you are stuck on a desert island and can only take one book. What would this be?

Bertrand Piccard: I wouldn't take a book. I would take music.

Ilham Kadri: ah,

Bertrand Piccard: I would take music. I would take the music from Leonard Cohen. Because Leonard Cohen makes me fall into a trance of hypnosis each time I listen to him and it makes me get more in relation with myself, with my inner self, the book once you've read it 10 times, you know it by heart, but the music is always something that renews itself.

Ilham Kadri: Maybe you can take both by the way. What's your superpower real or imagined. And what would be your soft power?

Bertrand Piccard: My creativity maybe, you know, the fact that I don't believe that something can be impossible. So, I'm not afraid to fail. And I know that if I try one more time than the number of failures I will succeed. So I think this is really what drives me.

Ilham Kadri: Driving, flying or sailing in the future.

Bertrand Piccard: Flying

Ilham Kadri: again, again and again.

Bertrand Piccard: Again, you know, you know, what I find extraordinary is that sailing and driving it's obvious. Flying for me is still a miracle. Can you imagine that for thousands of years, people have been dreaming about flying and it happened only at the end of the 19th century.

Ilham Kadri: Yeah. 

Bertrand Piccard: This is something extraordinary. And maybe now we forget to bit the magic of it. When we see low cost airplanes taking charter passengers and so on, but it's still magical and the next magic would be to fly clean. To fly more efficiently to fly without CO2, without burning any fossil energy. So, so the dream stays alive, you know, with aviation.

Ilham Kadri: Absolutely. And since you are an explorer, if you had to choose in the future, would you prefer to explore space or the deepest depths of the ocean?

Bertrand Piccard: Honestly speaking, I'm sorry for my father who was exploring the depths, but I would explore space. I would love to go to Mars. You know, the moon it's done already 50 years ago, but Mars, that's something interesting. I'm really keen to see what's going to happen. And if I can travel there once, yeah, I would be interested.

Upbringing and passion for exploring 

Ilham Kadri: Thank you. That was great. And, now, so for now, I mean that, that was serious enough, but let's get to different seriousness of our interaction. So you are really one of the great explorers of our time. I mean, each time I'm hearing your story, what you've done, the passion. I hear even people talking about that tour of the world, so it is just amazing is inspiring is contagious positively. And I know it's literally in your DNA as both your father, as you mentioned, and grandfather were famous explorers. So as I was wondering, was there a particular moment in your life Bertrand that really sparked this passion?

Bertrand Piccard: Yes. Yes, it was in July, 1969. And I remember very well at the moment. My father had started his drift mission with this submarine for one month diving in the Gulf stream. That's these currents so important for the climatology of the Northern hemisphere. And one week later I was invited to witness the launch of Apollo 11 in Cape Kennedy. And I was so elated by what I was seeing, and I thought this is the type of life that I would like to have. That's the life for me. I want to be an explorer. I want to go where no one has gone before. I want to do things that are considered impossible because it drives so much passion, so much excitement, and it is so useful for others.
And since that moment, I always chose all the options in my life where I had to say yes to explore something new or to do something new. So in the beginning it was not very very spectacular, but then it became a bit more exciting. It was flying with the first hang gliders that were coming in Switzerland, the first microlight airplanes then accepting the invitation of a Belgium pilot to be his co-pilot to cross the Atlantic. That was in 1992, exactly 30 years ago. I was not a balloonist. I was a hang glider pilot. I was a medical doctor. And I told him, yes, of course I come, because it was new because it triggered my passion for innovation. And then the flight around the world with the balloon, then the flight around the world with Solar Impulse you know, each time I think I had the compass in my heart with the needle was showing the unknown instead of the north, it was showing what was still to be achieved and that nobody had done. So it's a state of mind that I have had since my childhood.

Inspiration from his grandfather Auguste Piccard

Ilham Kadri: Yeah. And it's interesting to hear, you know, how much we are shaped by our childhoods. The story of your grandfather, Auguste Piccard, is fascinating as well, Bertrand. And I think it's amazing that he attended, you know, the conference, which was for me, that picture was a role model for me as a picture 1927 Solvay Conferences and can be seen in what's known now as the most intelligent picture ever taken with Marie Curie, obviously, who was one of my role models, Albert Einstein and all these great scientific minds of the time. I know he was, or I heard that he was an important role model for you. What did you learn from him? What do you remember from him?

Bertrand Piccard: I remember a very nice and warm grandfather because I was four years old when he passed away. So I did not remember any discussions with him. I remember when I was on his lap, that was taking me in his arms. And, all the rest I know from him is what my father told me, what I read in the books, what I read in the newspapers. And he was more than just an explorer with a stratospheric balloon. He was such an inventor, such a high level scientist. He is the one who discovered the uranium 235. Who made the most precise scale, the most precise seismograph of this time, and then invented the pressurized cabin and went to the stratosphere, opening the way to modern aviation. So it's true. That for me, it was incredible to see all what he achieved, but being so modest. So humble, you know, when someone asked him, but are you not afraid to go so high? He said, oh, no, not at all. Because you know, statistically, nobody ever stayed there. They all come down once. He had a sense of humor.

Ilham Kadri: Right. Great attribute of leadership is to explore, take risks, but also stay humble. He actually, you know, inspired Hergé right in the Professor Calculus. Is that right, Bertrand? 

Bertrand Piccard: You know, Hergé, the author of Tintin, explained by the end of his life all his sources of inspiration. And he made that very famous interview where he explained why he took my grandfather Auguste as the role model for TinTin and for Professor Calculus. And he said, Auguste Piccard was the archetype of the scientist and he wanted to use it for Calculus, but he said, I have to draw a small Piccard because he was too big for the pages of my book. So I had to reduce his size and, and draw a mini Piccard.

Flight in a solar plane around the world 

Ilham Kadri: So now Bertrand, I'd like to obviously jump to your own adventures and particularly your incredible journey around the world. In the solar impulse plane. I know our listeners would love to hear about the flight, but first let's start with the point when you came up with the idea, how did it start and what it took to make that idea reality, because I've heard you and you told me how many, how so many people told you, listen, it was impossible. And even those who followed you say it's impossible, but we're gonna do it. So help us understand when did it start and how you could make the impossible possible?

Bertrand Piccard: Yes, you, you know, I love to try something impossible because it attracts all the talent, all the skills of the people in the team. This is fantastic. If you announce a very easy project, you have dull people who come or lazy people who come. And so it's going to be easy. It's not challenging, but if you announce something impossible, all the people who want to solve problems, who want to bring solutions, want to invent, they all come. And this is how you make the impossible, possible, and this is what happened with Solar Impulse, so it's a fantastic team. So, but of course, what you asked me is how, what was the trigger for it? And it was a moment in the Egyptian desert, just after the landing of the Brightling. I had flown with Brian Jones, my friend from Great Britain. 20 days nonstop around the world in a balloon 45,000 kilometers. And we started with 3.7 tons of liquid propane. And at the end, when we landed, there was 40 kilos left.

Ilham Kadri: Wow.

Bertrand Piccard: That's really the moment where you start to understand the value of energy and also how fragile it is to rely on fossil energy because fossil energy is not unlimited. You always have an end to it. And when the tank is empty, you stop or you fall down from the sky or you have humankind in trouble. As we see now with the war in Russia. So this is the moment where I thought, okay, I made the longest flight ever in the history of aviation with propane. Now I will try to do it without fuel, completely clean and have a solar powered airplane that would be a demonstrator of how to achieve the impossible, thanks to renewable energy and clean technologies. And this is really how the story started.

Ilham Kadri: It's fascinating. And I think, the future and the present today just make you so, right, right. As everybody now is talking about clean mobility, et cetera, but we'll come to that. And by the way, I'm, I've been stealing something I heard from you. Uh, you, you told me if everyone tells you that something is possible, that means that your dreams are not big enough. So I love that sentence. So. It must have been such an incredible experience making that journey, Bertrand. And then you have a co-pilot, André Borschberg. Tell us more about what that was like for you, for your co-pilot. How did you go along with each other? How did you find each other? Help me understand how you build that team.

Bertrand Piccard: It was very important for the success of this project to have the perfect relation between Andre and I. We were very different. He's an engineer and a jet fighter pilot. I'm a balloonist and a psychiatrist. We could not be more different. And during the feasibility study that was run at the EPFL, the Swiss federal Institute of Technology, each time we had to say something, we said the opposite and we were looking at each other. 

Ilham Kadri: That's real complementarity and diversity of thoughts.

Bertrand Piccard: It was unbelievable. If, if I was saying yes, he was saying no, or the opposite and, and we were laughing and we started to think, okay, why do you think this way? And why do I think this way? And what can I learn from you? And what can you learn from me? And we started to develop a relationship where one plus one equals three. His experience, my experience and the third experience that we were building together and that none of us could have had without the other one. And this was the relation, the experience, this number three, that made us so innovative because alone, I could never have done this project. Alone Andre could have never done it, but together we had this spirit of just challenging all our habits, all our beliefs, all our certitudes. And that was contagious because we gave that to the team and in the team, we had very, very different people also. And they were all allowed to criticize what Andre and I were saying to say, look, we have another experience, we have another solution. Let's talk about it. And we could always include new experiences into the discussions. And that was absolutely crucial because, you know, uh, we had to do an airplane that was completely outside of the norms of aircraft construction. And this is why they told us it's impossible because they showed us, look, if an airplane is small, it has to be light. If an airplane is big, it has to be heavy. And your airplane doesn't fit in the curve. Your airplane is big and light, so it's not possible. Can you imagine they were so stubborn.

Ilham Kadri: Unbelievable.

Bertrand Piccard: And we had to make an airplane that never existed before the size of a jumbo jet, even bigger than a jumbo jet and lighter than a family car and the power to fly around the world was the power of the scooter.

The future of flight

Ilham Kadri: Wow. It's really amazing.  You never stopped by the way, right, Bertrand, to celebrate the anniversary of solar impulse flight, you flew together with Andre on an electrical airplane. What is the future of electric flight in your opinion?

Bertrand Piccard: You know, when I was flying with Andre in the electric plane, for the fifth anniversary of the flight around the world, what was really powerful in the message we gave was the fact that solar impulse was not just an experimental airplane for an adventure that had no future. It was the start, the beginning of a new way to think about flying and to be able to fly electric, to fly without noise. To fly without pollution is something that has to be taken seriously today. And, when we speak of electric aviation, people have to understand that it's not only with batteries. It's not only with solar energy. It can be with hydrogen, for example, because the hydrogen can go into a fuel cell and this electricity given by the fuel cell through with the hydrogen is running an electric engine and an electric engine is twice the efficiency of a thermal engine. Sometimes even three or four times, if you compare with a car, but if you compare with a turbine it's about twice more efficient, so you need less energy to fly the same trip. So electric aviation, I think, is something that really has a future.

Ilham Kadri: And you see a hybrid. So you talked about the hydrogen, you’re right. 

Bertrand Piccard: Hydrogen runs electric engines.

Ilham Kadri: Yeah, yeah. And, for instance, Airbus also recently had a plane taking off with cooking oil. You heard, Bertrad, and it shows the promise of another way of sustainable aviation fuel. So what you are telling us is there are different methods of emission free flights, right? You see it as a hybrid or you see one technology and one way winning against the others.

Bertrand Piccard: It depends on the size of the airplane and the weight, I believe small airplanes to go on aeroclubs for training pilots, that will be with batteries, electric airplane with batteries. And maybe this will go to 10 or 20 passengers. Then I think for bigger planes, it won't be batteries. It'll be sustainable aviation fuel or biofuel, or it can be electro fuel, or it can be hydrogen. And these types of fuels can go to quite big airplanes.

Ilham Kadri: Yeah.

Bertrand Piccard: Now what I think. And let's imagine the future in a very disruptive way. If you want to fly very long distances, instead of flying in the atmosphere or in the stratosphere where you have some resistance, you can fly in space. It means, it means you can do a parabolic flight. You take up from Paris or Brussels, like a rocket. You shut down the engine after 15 minutes. You are zero gravity, parabolic flights, and you land after an hour and a half or two hours in, in Australia. So these types of things could also save a lot of energy, a lot of fuel. And we have to think big and to dream big because these type of things are not happening yet, but we should include it into the vision of sustainable aviation.

Ilham Kadri: Yeah, I love it. Actually. I hope I can see it in my life on earth.

Bertrand Piccard: So you are, you are much younger than me. 

Next adventures 

Ilham Kadri: And you, yeah. So you might, do you have any exciting new adventures on the horizon you can share with our audience.

Bertrand Piccard: Yes, it has not been officially announced yet, but it is not a secret. It's not a secret. I'm working on two big projects today. One is a solar airship, like a Zeppelin, 150 meters long, fully solar, that will be able to drive electric engines and to fly around the world nonstop only on renewable energy with absolutely no fuel. And this will be for the first time because Breitling orbiter burns some fuel, propane, although it was nonstop, Solar Impulse had no fuel, but we had to make some stopovers. So the next step that is obvious is to fly nonstop around the world with zero emissions and just renewable energy. And that would be a fantastic journey to speak to schools, to universities, to governments, and promote all those solutions to protect the environment. 

The second project that will be maybe a couple of years later, is a hydrogen airplane, for two seater, fully clean, also green hydrogen, and to fly around the world. You will say, I always love to fly around the world, but it's true. I love to fly around the world because it's the ultimate flight you can do. You cannot do more and cannot do better. And if you want to prove the maturity of a new clean and sustainable technology, I think it's the best way to do. So this is what I'm working on. 

Solar Impulse solutions that are sustainable AND profitable

Bertrand Piccard: And meanwhile, I continue with the solar impulse foundation to select all the solutions that can protect the environment that can be economically viable. And now we work on their implementation to push them on the markets, to motivate the governments, motivate the big corporations. To use all these new solutions that can help us to be carbon neutral. But you know that, you know that Ilham.

Ilham Kadri: I know.

Bertrand Piccard: A lot, a lot of these solutions come also from Solvay, we have labeled them and you continue to support me with Solvay and support the foundation. 

Ilham Kadri: And frankly, you support us as well because you are, I mean, this podcast is about the power of the AND, A-N-D, and I always said, we can be sustainable and profitable. Right. We can, you know, we can do that. And that's exactly what you are doing with the Solar Impulse solutions. You put out a call for 1,000 and by now you have over 1500 or, you know, something like that. Right, Bertrand?

Bertrand Piccard: Yes, one thousand one thousand four hundred and fifty.

Ilham Kadri: That's it. So, but tell us a good anecdote, maybe one innovative solution you've seen in the projects far away from aviation, which stuck with you.

Bertrand Piccard: One of the first solutions that we have selected, is a startup in France who recovers the heat from the chimneys of the factories. So you reuse that heat in the factory. And I like that example very much because it's obvious it's not very high tech. It's just common sense. But since the beginning of the industrial revolution, people don't understand that it's not only smoke going out of the chimney. It's also heat that is lost. That means energy that is wasted and a higher energy bill at the end. So that's an example where you have profitability and sustainability.

Ilham Kadri: Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing.

Bertrand Piccard: So, the AND, A-N-D is so important because it has to be inclusive. Today in our world, we are splitting people apart far too much. You have the left and the right, you have the ecology and the industry. You have philanthropy and finance. Well, everything has to go together. We need to bring people together. Big corporations have solutions that will help the ecologists and the green parties to protect the environment and it'll create jobs and it'll increase the purchasing power of the people. And if we don't federate people together, we will never have a success. So, I love the title of your podcast.

Bertrand’s latest book: logical AND ecological

Ilham Kadri: Yeah. And, and it's amazing what you are saying. You say this actually, when you brought your team together, and you said we had diversity of thought complementary of competencies, and it was important for you to be inclusive. So that power of the AND is important. And probably many people by now know that you're also a doctor, a psychologist, but you are also a writer writing many books. And I want to talk about your latest book in English, “let's be logical as well as ecological”. And that's also, it's about the power of the AND, right? That even right there in the title, logical AND ecological and the book is really fantastic. And I love the way you talk about how saving our planet is not necessarily an exercise in self flagellation, right. So can you tell our listeners more about the book? Why a book?

Bertrand Piccard: Because I gave a lot of speeches. I gave a lot of interviews, but I also needed something that would be a reference that would include everything I believe in, everything I want to transmit. And in the book is something that stays longer than interviews or speeches. And, I wanted in this book to show that everybody can find an advantage in the protection of the environment. The ecologist, the industrials, the financial people, the population, the political authorities, we all have an advantage, but if we only see our own advantage at the detriment of the others, we'll never succeed. But if we try to find the advantage of all of the actors, we will succeed and everybody will be stronger than before. And, you know, that's one of the big rules is that if you only look at your own interest, you will fail. If you look at the common interest, everybody will succeed. And I wanted to show that we can change the narrative of the protection of the environment. Until now ecology was presented as something that was expensive, that was boring, that was threatening, reducing economical, growth, mobility, comfort, and so on. And it creates a lot of resistance, a lot of opposition, but we can change the narrative and present ecology as something exciting, economically viable, bringing people together, creating jobs and, and then ecology starts to be the most fantastic adventure of the 21st century, bringing everybody together in the common goal to succeed.

Pret a voter: making legislation and regulation work for sustainable and profitable solutions 

Ilham Kadri: Absolutely. And it makes sense for humanity and it makes sense indeed for the pockets as well, if you do it right. So it has to be viable economically. And I mean, I can just recommend the book, but you also, what's amazing with you is again, I say you never stop. Unstoppable explorer, but you also bring interesting initiatives. I saw in France, it's called pret a vote, or vote ready, which is about taking many of these existing, sustainable and profitable solutions as a starting point to guide legislation. And you told me one day now I'm taking my luggage and I'm going around the world to convince the big heads of state and policy makers that the solutions, they do exist. They should use them. They should promote them. Tell us more about that. And do you think it could be implemented in many countries, including, you know, emerging countries or in Africa?

Bertrand Piccard: Yes, absolutely. This campaign started with a big question I had. We identified 1,450 solutions that exist today that are economically profitable that protect the environment, available for everyone, and they are not used. People don't even know them. People keep on speaking about problems instead of speaking about solutions. And I started to think, why is it like this? And I saw that one big obstacle for the global deployment of efficient solutions is the outdated regulations and legislations. The legal framework today is still adapted to the polluting technologies we had 50 or a hundred years ago. So we have to modernize the legal framework as much as we already have modernized the technology. So we took 50 examples of solutions, where there is a legal obstacle for their deployment. And these 50 recommendations explain very clearly with 50 examples, there is a solution for this. It is economically viable. It protects the environment, but there is an obstacle to the deployment and we suggest that you change the regulation in this precise way to make this solution implemented everywhere in France. And I presented that already to the president of the sustainable development commission of the French parliament and he was very happy. He said, this is exactly what we need. This is called participative democracy, where the population comes with suggestions. And I hope that the different parts of the parliament are going really to see that it's to their own advantage for every party to work on that and to vote these changes in regulations because we are not suggesting to make tough regulations to make punishments and so on. No, it's just to allow, to allow things to happen, to modernize the regulation in order to have more modern solutions be used everywhere. And this is for the advantage of everyone.

Ilham Kadri: Yeah. And make, you know, change policies and regulation to become an enabler because one of the challenges in the industry believe it or not, the limitation is often permitting and the length of permitting and the admin work. So I think if policy makers and you are doing a great job, let's bring it to Belgium and elsewhere. So don't stay in France. I'm sure you will not. Tell me now.

Experience as a psychologist 

Ilham Kadri: We're getting to the end of our podcast. As I said, you are a doctor, you say that you're a psychologist. I’ve heard you talk about how that helps you understand how people can often be a bit fearful of change or going into the unknown. Can you tell us how that background has affected your thinking and your work? 

Bertrand Piccard: When I was practicing psychotherapy with private patients, I was always stunned to see how much reluctant they were to change. They were coming to see me because there was a big change or crisis in their lives. They were coming and say, I don't want to change. I want to recover what I had before. And of course it's not possible. So what I was doing was to use hypnosis to show them a positive future that was including the change that they needed to implement. And this is so interesting because you visualize another future. And you visualize how much better it will be. Thanks to the change that you have to go to. So you have a motivation to change. You have the confidence to change, but of course you have to go with them. You have to accompany them. You cannot let them alone. 

Advice for young explorers and entrepreneurs

Ilham Kadri: So I know now that there are many young people and not so young, by the way, who are really inspired by you and would like to become explorers, entrepreneurs, you know, go into policy makers and change the world. What advice would you give them?

Bertrand Piccard: I would like to advise them to always go behind the scene. Always go beyond the official way of thinking, behind the politically correct, the statistically proven and reproducible, the scientific proves. Always try to challenge the status quo. If you hear someone speaking, try to understand what there is behind. If you see two people making a debate. Don't listen so much to the one with whom you agree, try to listen to the one with whom you disagree and you start to try to understand what is his vision of the world, you know, always go into what is not obvious and always keep this compass with a needle is showing the unknown, the doubts, the question marks, the uncertainties. Because it's the only way to stimulate our performance and our creativity. If we live in the routine, if we live in what we know, we don't need to be creative and innovative, but when we are in faced in front of a big doubt, a big question mark, then we're obliged to start to think again, we're obliged to invent. We're obliged to find an answer and it's a, I would almost say it's a decision of what type of life we want to have. Do we want to have an easy life that is maybe smooth at the beginning, but we lose control because it doesn't depend on us anymore or do we want to be responsible of our life to invent our future.

Ilham Kadri: Yeah, so own it. Raise the bar, don't fear, you know, go to the unknown. And science is about confronting the unknown and you know, what is reality today can be challenged tomorrow. So you invite us and owning it. So what an inspiration. 

Kitesurfing

Ilham Kadri: One last question, Bertrand, finishing with fun, like I started, I know that you're an avid kite surfer, which looks so fun. Where do you surf? And what is it like to be out there on the waves?

Bertrand Piccard: My favorite place is in Dakhla, in Southern Morocco

Ilham Kadri: That's close to my home. This is my home.

Bertrand Piccard: Absolutely. In the south of Morocco.

Ilham Kadri: Wow.

Bertrand Piccard: There is a Laguna with constant winds and I go there almost each year and I have friends there. And you know, you would, it's, it's a mix of flying and sailing because you have your, your sail in the sky. So it's like a paraglider, but you are gliding on the water. So it's fly AND sail together.

Ilham Kadri: So that's the power of the AND. Thank you so much. Bertrand, thank you for being here today. You are one of the most inspiring leaders I met in my life, encouraging all of us to take risks, go into the unknown and discover, and you show how we can make the impossible possible by tapping into the power of the AND. Thank you very much, Bertrand.

Bertrand Piccard: Thank you so much for everything we shared together, we shared in the past and we will continue to share together.