ALTERNATIVE FUELS — Solar Impulse made history last week with the first intercontinental flight powered by the sun, which landed in Rabat, Morocco, after a 19 hour flight from Madrid. “Aside from technical and political reasons behind the decision to fly to Morocco, simply the flight over the Gibraltar Strait was a magical moment and represents one of the high- lights of my career as an aeronaut,” the plane’s pilot Bertrand Piccard said last week. He is also a founder of the Solar Impulse project, which is gearing up to fly a solar-powered aircraft around the world in 2014. The flight’s political message about the urgency for investment in renewable energy technologies dovetails with the integrated Moroccan Solar Plan, which aims to develop a solar plat- form with a minimum power capacity of 2,000 MW by 2020, reducing C02 emissions by 3.7 million tons. The carbon fiber air- craft has a wingspan as wide as an Airbus A340 (63.4 meters) and weighs about 1,600 kilograms — similar to an average automobile. 12,000 solar cells are integrated onto the surface of its wingspan. Last week the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) bestowed on Piccard a 2012 Champion of the Earth Laureate Award for outstanding efforts in sustainable development.
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