Activist and explorer Bertrand Picard, born on March 1, 1958, in Lausanne, Switzerland, plans to fly worldwide with an aircraft powered solely by green hydrogen. Set to first fly in 2028, the airplane will be named Climate Impulse. It is being built in France by composite engineer and navigator Raphaël Dinelli following two years of research.
The project has the support of European aircraft manufacturers Airbus Daher and Capgemini, with the participation of the Ariane Group, who designed and manufactured the famous Ariane rockets for the European Space Agency (ESA).
Bertrand Picard is determined to lessen the impact of aviation on climate change. To achieve this, he famously was at the helm of Solar Impulse, an aircraft he flew worldwide powered solely by solar energy. According to the BBC, the airplane completed the first global circumnavigation in a solar-powered electric plane on July 26, 2016, and covered 42,000km (ca 26,700 miles).