News
/ 5 June 2020
The Solar Impulse Foundation, which launched the Global Alliance for Clean Technologies in 2016, has just conferred its “Efficient Solution” label on Sun’Agri, a pioneer and the global market leader in dynamic agrivoltaics. The foundation established by Bertrand Piccard is thus rewarding this ground-breaking technology, which enables certain agricultural sectors to adapt to climate change.
Following the success of Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg’s first round-the-world flight in a solar plane, the Solar Impulse Foundation has created the Efficient Solutions label to promote companies offering technologies that combine environmental protection and financial results. With this label, the foundation aims to identify 1,000 solutions within the Global Alliance for Clean Technology that address this dual environmental and economic challenge and present them to political decision-makers. Agriculture – severely affected by climate change and soil artificialisation and faced with the need to develop more sustainable economic models – is one of Solar Impulse’s priority areas.
The foundation has just awarded this label[1] to Sun’Agri, a pioneer and the global market leader in dynamic agrivoltaics. This ground-breaking technology consists of a system of agricultural louvres equipped with mobile solar panels that are placed at a sufficient height above the plants to allow for proper ventilation and the passage of agricultural machinery. What makes this system unique is that the panels are always positioned to serve the plant: controlled by algorithms tailored to its needs, its growth pattern and the weather conditions, they tilt to provide sunlight or shade, as required. The technology is particularly well suited to areas and perennial crops that are most affected by climate change.
“Our foundation aims to highlight solutions that stimulate economic growth while protecting the environment, such as Sun’Agri’s technology”, says Bertrand Piccard, founder and President of Solar Impulse.
“We are honoured to be awarded the Efficient Solution label, which marks a further step in the recognition of dynamic agrivoltaics as a key solution for adapting agriculture to climate change. This is a wonderful recognition of the work we have been doing for over 10 years”, adds Antoine Nogier, President and founder of Sun’Agri.
To obtain the label, Sun’Agri had to demonstrate that its technology meets various criteria related to technical feasibility, environmental benefits and economic profitability, and that it will contribute to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals 7 and 12, namely “Clean and Affordable Energy” and “Responsible Consumption and Production”.
After being recognised by the global wine and fruit industry with a gold medal at the SITEVI Innovation Awards in November 2019, Sun’Agri was also a big winner when Elisabeth Borne, the French Minister of the Ecological Transition, announced the results of the call for tender for “innovative photovoltaic solar energy” at the beginning of April: on this occasion, 15 of our projects were selected.
Similarly, the French company ITK, an industrial partner in the research programmes carried out by Sun’Agri, has received the Solar Impulse Foundation’s label for its Vintel software, a decision-making tool for vineyard management that is suitable for all terroirs. ITK specialises in agri-intelligence and develops agronomic decision analysis tools. This “co-labelling” reinforces the visibility of the industrial and commercial cooperation between ITK and Sun’Agri, which was recently made official. The objective is to join forces in order to deploy large-scale solutions to help agriculture adapt to climate change.
[1] https://solarimpulse.com/efficient-solutions/dynamic-agrivoltaic-system
