"Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles." Bill Gates

There are very few environmental and economic problems that cannot be solved with sufficient energy.  With enough energy one can desalinize seawater and pump it to where the fresh water is needed.  Food can be grown in the Sahara.  With enough energy one can electrolyze water to make portable hydrogen, which by burning, one can power transportation with water as the sole product of combustion.

I read a science fiction story once (I think) where a scientist in the distant future lamented how our generation merely burned petroleum – which took millions of years to form and can’t be replaced.  This future culture had found a miraculous medical use for petrochemicals but they were extremely scarce and expensive because we had burned most of it.

There is an ample supply of energy that is ideal for the solution to all of our problems.  There is a slight problem of the lack of the technology at present to use this supply.  I’m referring to solar, of course.  For our current (pun intended) needs there is essentially an inexhaustible quantity.

However, I don’t think the answer is to cover a desert with solar panels.  I can’t prove it, but my gut tells me that such a strategy, involving an adequate scale, would alter the earth’s ecology.  All of that solar energy captured by the solar panels was formerly heating up the desert sand and affecting the atmospheric conditions.  I don’t think you can mess with that and not have consequences.

So, ultimately, we will capture solar energy that never hits the earth.  We put solar panels in space where they don’t block the view or cast a shadow from the sun – say over the poles.  The solar panels gather up the solar energy that would miss the earth anyway and beam it to ground stations via lasers.  From the ground stations the energy would be distributed globally and all problems solved.  There are a few details to work out but think of the wonders of such a system - no pollutants, no shortages.

When the sun burns out…

2014 Lester C. Welch