Wallonia joins the 1000 solutions challenge

The Belgian region of Wallonia partners with the Solar Impulse Foundation to speed up the 1000 solutions challenge, bring Walloon cleantech solutions to the world and help the region achieve its environmental targets. 

On Friday April 26th, the Walloon Region announced it will collaborate with the Solar Impulse Foundation and bring both financial support and expertise to help the Foundation achieve its mission of selecting 1000 clean, efficient and profitable solutions to protect the environment. This announcement follows a meeting between the Walloon Minister for Energy and Climate, Jean-Luc Crucke, with Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele and Bertrand Piccard at COP24 in Poland in December 2018.

First and foremost, the collaboration aims to involve the scientific experts of the “Walloon Platform for the IPCC” (Plateforme Wallonne pour le GIEC), which supports and coordinates the work of the Walloon scientists participating in the IPCC, in the Solar Impulse Foundation’s solution assessment. From now on, the Walloon experts will bring their expertise to evaluate the solutions’ environmental and socio-economic impact.

The involvement of these experts will accelerate the pace of evaluations of solutions, which is the cornerstone of our activities. The assessments, which verify if solutions meet high standards of sustainability and profitability, decide if solutions are granted the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label, and therefore become part of the 1000 solutions portfolio.

In addition to the involvement of Walloon experts, the collaboration aims to promote even more Walloon clean technologies. Since the launch of the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label, three Belgian solutions have been labelled:

• QPinch, in Antwerp: the objective is to reduce the global carbon footprint of the global process industry by deploying innovative heat recovery technology;
• SmartNodes, in Liege: SmartNodes technology is based on the deployment of intercommunicating sensors along the streets to adapt street lighting levels in real time to traffic density and the type of users (cars, cyclists and pedestrians).
• Sunoptimo, in Namur: a new solution to provide "solar" heat.

This partnership with Wallonia is yet another confirmation of the interest of public stakeholders to work with the Solar Impulse Foundation, following collaborations with the Occitania region and Scotland. It consolidates our unique positioning, with strong footholds both in the cleantech community and with public authorities. Such agreements, not only help us achieve our #1000solutions challenge faster, but moreover they participate in accelerating the transition to a sustainable society.