The Solar Impulse Foundation is an environmental non-profit project that is founded in 2003 by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
[8][11][12] Piccard and the Solar Impulse Foundation announced the launch of the affiliated World Alliance for Clean Technologies network at the November 2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Marrakech, Morocco.
[14] They must also fill out an extensive application and go through an Ernst & Young-certified process where their solutions are vetted by members of the World Alliance to evaluate the potential for economic success and to estimate the length of the payback period for investors.
[2][14] To qualify for the label, solutions must fit one of five sustainable development goals from the United Nations, specifically water, clean energy, industry, cities, and responsible consumption and production.
[2][16] The Solar Impulse Foundation funds the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions, whose annual operating budget was reported by GreenBiz in 2018 to be $2.9 million U.S. dollars per year.
[14] In May 2020, Piccard and the corporate partners of the Solar Impulse Foundation published a statement in the Financial Times calling on governments to prioritize the implementation of clean technologies in their global COVID-19 recovery efforts.