Meet the Inventor

Art Burtis — Founder and Inventor

Founder of Solar Air Technologies, LLC

Art Burtis is the founder of Solar Air Technologies, LLC, the company that owns the patents and intellectual property behind the Solar Air Cylinder and Solar Air Tower-Chimney power systems. He is the original inventor of the technology and has spent decades developing it into a buildable, scalable clean-energy infrastructure platform.

For more than forty years, Burtis worked as a master builder and stone mason in Marin County, California, designing and constructing complex structural systems for commercial and residential projects. His professional background is rooted in physical construction — foundations, load-bearing structures, airflow, and heat behavior — giving him a practical understanding of how large-scale systems function under real-world conditions.

As Burtis has stated, “I’ve spent my life watching how air moves through buildings and how heat changes everything.”

Origin of the Solar Air Cylinder

The Solar Air Cylinder emerged from this hands-on experience. Rather than relying on combustion, batteries, or exotic materials, the system is based on well-understood physical principles: concentrated solar heat, controlled airflow, and vertical pressure differentials.

Burtis explains the core idea simply: “Hot air rises. That’s not a theory — it’s how the world works. All I did was give it a path.”

By creating a vertical column of heated air, continuous upward airflow is produced and converted into mechanical and electrical energy through turbines. This allows power to be generated day and night using stored thermal energy, without fuel, combustion, or emissions.

Intellectual Property and Control

To protect the integrity and long-term development of the technology, Burtis formed Solar Air Technologies, LLC as the IP-holding entity. This company owns the patents, engineering designs, and system architecture behind the Solar Air Cylinder.

Burtis has been explicit about why he retained control of the technology: “I didn’t invent this so it could sit on a shelf. I invented it so it could run.”

CAFA License and Deployment Model

Rather than commercializing through traditional venture capital, Burtis granted Clean Air For All (CAFA) a license to deploy the Solar Air technology for public-benefit and commercial projects.

His rationale was straightforward: “If you wait for the perfect investor, nothing gets built. If you build it, people show up.”

Under this structure, Solar Air Technologies retains ownership of the patents, while CAFA is authorized to build and operate Solar Air Cylinders. Revenue from CAFA deployments is reinvested into building additional units, accelerating global deployment.

Infrastructure, Not Experiment

Burtis has consistently emphasized that the Solar Air Cylinder is meant to function as permanent energy infrastructure, not a laboratory prototype.

As he puts it, “One tower doesn’t change the world. A thousand of them might.”

Ongoing Work

Through Solar Air Technologies and CAFA, Art Burtis continues to focus on turning this technology into operating infrastructure.

His guiding principle remains clear: “Once people can see it working, nobody has to take my word for it.”