The need for a huge new supply of electricity over the next 50–100 years is blindingly obvious. The alternatives are either a drastic collapse of living standards in the developed world—and no doubt elsewhere as well—or a radical reduction in the number of humans on this Earth. Probably both.Last year the academic quarterly Daedalus published an article by Daniel Nocera of MIT in which he laid out a credible and alarming vision of this world’s future energy demands. He pointed out that in 2002 the whole world “burned energy at a rate of 13.3 TW [terawatts]” and he calculated that “if 9 billion people adopt the current standard of living for a US resident… the world would need an astronomical 102 TW of energy in 2050.” He also pointed out that “If everyone adopts Equatorial Guinea’s current living standards, we will need 30.4 TW by 2050.”
The scientific and engineering principles of space solar power are well understood. The biggest obstacles are cost, of course, and the will to do it.
Professor Nocera makes it clear that neither conservation nor wind, nuclear, hydro, or biomass energy sources are going to be able, even when taken together, to fill the demand for energy that any reasonable standard of living will require. China and India alone will need more energy than is produced today by the entire planet. Coal, oil, and gas could provide some of the answer but environmental and security reasons tend to rule out those alternatives. Even if one is skeptical of the whole anthropomorphic global warming theory, there are good reasons to want to minimize the use of oil and natural gas and to tread carefully when it comes to using coal as a primary energy source.
So his solution is to go for solar energy in a big way. Above all, he wants us to use it make hydrogen fuel, using artificial photosynthesis instead of the more familiar photovoltaic process. That requires a number of scientific breakthroughs that Nocera claims are within reach...read more about space based solar power
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