Become an Expert
Volunteering for a nonprofit: Join our team of international experts
1000 solutions
Help us make sure they are the right ones
The Solar Impulse Foundation has committed to identify 1000 Solutions that can protect the environment in a profitable way, demonstrating to decision-makers that such solutions exist and that they can adopt more ambitious targets, policies and regulations to help bring them to market.
We focus our efforts on five of the Sustainable Development Goals, namely water, energy, industry, sustainable cities, and responsible consumption/production.
To do this, we need business, technology and sustainability experts with more than five years of experience that assess these solutions according to their technological feasibility, environmental and socio-economic benefits, and potential or realized profitability. Those solutions that meet this criteria will be labelled as Solar Impulse Efficient Solutions, lending them credibility.
That’s why we need you!
How it Works
Interested? Here’s how to get started
Sign up to become an expert!
By signing in, you agree with our Terms of Services
2
Create a profile
Create your account and complete your profile, indicating your areas of expertise. Once validated, we can begin assigning solutions to you for assessment. You will only be assigned solutions if you have the necessary expertise. During registration you will be asked to sign a Voluntary Commitment which is linked to the Roles & Conditions document providing all rules of your contribution in detail.
3
Assignments
Once a solution is assigned to you for assessment, you will be given the opportunity to read a short description of it and then accept or decline the assignment accordingly. Once accepted, you will gain access to the full solution submission, which will serve as the basis for your assessment.
4
Assessment
You will assess the submission against three criteria - technological feasibility, environmental and socio-economic benefits, and potential or realized profitability - and in accordance with our Certified Methodology, using your own experiences and competencies. The assessment will take place online, with your feedback collected in the form of ratings and comments. Your completed assessment will be sent to the World Alliance team who will then decide as to whether a submission is labelled as an Efficient Solution.
FAQs
We are not able to financially remunerate experts for their time and effort in support of our challenge. The World Alliance for Efficient Solutions provides all its services free of charge to its members, including the solutions assessment, thanks to the partners of the Solar Impulse Foundation. However, experts are able to publicly share their role as “Advisory Expert of the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions”, thereby serving as ambassadors for it. Their involvement as experts also allows experts to get direct insight into recent innovations and the landscape of solutions that exist in their thematic area. If an expert finds a solution of interest, the World Alliance will try to enable an introduction to the solutions provider. In addition, the demands placed upon experts, relative to other similar processes, are relatively modest, though we are certainly cognizant of the commitment made by experts. Lastly, you would be contributing to the achievement of the Solar Impulse Foundation’s ambitious challenge to select 1000 Efficient Solutions.
The involvement of each expert may vary over time depending on the possible tasks, personal fit to available solutions and very importantly the availability of the expert. Assessing one solution should take an expert between 120 and 180 minutes in total. With this in mind, the expert can accept or decline assignment depending on their current availability.
As an expert you are asked to be impartial and to indicate if there is a conflict of interest that would prevent you from assessing the solution in such a manner. In addition, solution submitters are able to indicate if there are any entities or institutions (not individuals - the identities of who is assessing their solution is unknown to them) from our roster that they would not like to be assessed by. They are not obliged to explain their choice.
Please note that we ask the solution providers to offer to us non-confidential information only. As a precaution and to allow us to stay in control of the information flow of the selection process we ask you to keep all information received confidential and to delete any record after a certain period of time after the task has ended.
To retain the integrity of the process, the identity of which experts are assessing which solutions remains confidential. The chat function on the website will also be monitored to ensure identities are not shared.
We are looking for a wide range of innovations - be they products, processes or services - that contribute to improving the quality of life on Earth in the realms of water, energy, industry and infrastructure, cities, mobility, consumption and production. More explicitly, any member of the World Alliance can submit a solution, as long as it falls within the scope of our challenge, meaning that it; - must be a product, process, or service, - have reached the maturity stage of at-scale prototype testing in a laboratory, and - contributes to the achievement of at least one of the five following Sustainable Development Goals 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation 7 – Affordable and Clean Energy 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production
You must have at least 5 years professional or research experience in a relevant field to the solutions being assessed, and committed to invest a certain amount of time over the next year. In addition, experts are asked to be impartial and respect confidentiality, and flag any conflicts of interest as they may arise.
Still have questions about the label?
Here are just a few of the things people frequently ask about being an Expert. If you don't see your question here, get in touch with us.
