Anthony Howarth originated the First Solar Circumnavigation project in 1994. 

Anthony Howarth is a Cambridge graduate engineer and a communicator. Since the 1980s he can claim to be one of the world’s foremost practitioners in the practical use of solar power for transport.
He brings media and sailing experience as well as solar drive system engineering expertise to the project.

Anthony Howarth has covered 50,000 blue water miles under sail, undertaken major ocean crossings. Between 1988 and 2002 he lived aboard a boat for 14 years.
He has directed series for television and has an academy award nomination and Golden Globe nomination for Best Cinema Feature length Documentary, People of The Wind. A film which involved crossing six mountain ranges including the 15,000 ft snow covered Zard Kuh while filming the migration of half a million people and five million animals. Even the crew had 19 mules to carry equipment for two months of filming!
He has driven right round Africa, London-Cairo-Cape Town-Casablanca-London. On another occasion, he drove from Nairobi to Nairobi via Cape town and all countries in Southern Africa.  He has driven from the Arctic circle to the Equator in three prototype vehicles of his own design and construction – Channel 4 series A Car For Africa.

As an engineer, Anthony Howarth first proposed serious use of solar power for transport at the time of the second oil crisis in 1979. He published his conclusions in 1987.
In the 1990s he built several proof of concept solar boats and solar vehicles, all of which proved successful and more useful and practical than anticipated. One of these solar boats, a small catamaran solar dinghy, is 15 years old and  will be the life raft for the voyage and one of the solar vehicles, an exceptionally light- weight solar quad, already ten years old, will be aboard to provide transport at landfalls.

From 1994-1997,Tony Howarth, with his daughter, Karen Howarth, campaigned a project for The First Solar Circumnavigator called, Global GreenCat (Cat as in Catamaran). 
Industry support in goods and services was forthcoming at all levels and from all major brands (names available) but not enough financial sponsorship was found at that time.
The environmental, political and energy issues which solar power can address are more accepted and more acute now, in 2009, than they were in 1994.