“Solar Impulse is a European long-range solar powered plane project being undertaken by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg. The project eventually hopes to succeed in the first circling of the earth with a piloted fixed-wing aircraft using only solar power. The first aircraft, bearing the Swiss aircraft registration code of HB-SIA, is a single-seater, capable of taking off under its own power, and intended to remain airborne up to 36 hours. This aircraft first flew an entire diurnal solar cycle, including nearly 9 hours of night flying, in a 26-hour flight on 7–8 July 2010”. – Wikipedia


Photo: Workers prepare the Solar Impulse airplane HB-SIA for a first runway test on November 19, 2009 in Dubendorf, Switzerland. Solar Impulse chairman Bertrand Piccard, psychatrist and aeronaut, who made the first non-stop round-the-world balloon flight, and CEO and former fighter pilot Andrй Borschberg plan a round-the-world flight, driven only by solar energy, for 2012. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

Wind turbines stand in the Baltic 1 offshore wind farm on April 29, 2011 in the Baltic Sea near Zingst, Germany. Baltic 1, a project of German energy utility EnBW that includes 21 turbines rated at 2.3 megawatts each, will be Germany's first commercial offshore wind farm once it officially begins operation on May 2. Germany has thus far lagged in offshore wind farm construction when compared to neighbors like Great Britain and Denmark, though German Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to invest heavily into offshore wind farms as part of an overall policy to encourage renewable energy production. (Photo by Joern Pollex/Getty Images)