Solar Impulse receives EU support
The Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard has presented his "Solar Impulse" plane, in which he plans to fly around the world, to the European Commission in Brussels.
Jacques Barrot, the Commission’s vice-president, on Wednesday announced official support for the project, which he said was about promoting “modern and clean technology”.
Piccard, the initiator and president of the project, says the Solar Impulse is the symbol of the new technologies that society ought to be capable of rallying behind in order to conserve the planet’s energy resources.
If all the sums work, the plane could make a 36-hour flight – the equivalent of a complete day-night-day cycle – in 2009 without any fuel.
For the European Commission, the Solar Impulse is an example of what industry and energy policy makers should be doing to foster energy efficiency and clean mobility.
“A world without the aeroplane is unimaginable,” said Barrot. “But we still do not have a blueprint for the aeroplane of the future, an environmentally friendly aeroplane.”
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