Energy policy is in the news again, with debates in Congress, statements from presidential candidates, consternation over our dependence on the Middle East for oil, and a California recall election traceable in part to energy supply problems for that state. Use of energy, whether fuel for transportation, electrical energy running the internet, or the destructive energy released in weapons, is central to our economy and security.
It is with good reason that the technical term for energy use per unit time, “power”, suggests control in the human world as well. Three actions taken now – working to reserve radio spectrum for power transmission, focusing on reductions in costs for space launch, and investing in space solar power system research – hold the promise of opening up vast new sources of power within the next 10-15 years.
Space is big – there is an awful lot of energy out there, and the crumbs we fight about here on Earth are laughably tiny in comparison. Zettawatts from the Sun pass just through the region between Earth and Moon – that’s enough energy for each man, woman and child in the US to sustainably power an entire US economy all to themselves. Even our terrestrial energy choices, fossil or renewable, fission or wind, almost all derive from the energy profligacy of our Sun and other stars before it.
Gathering power in space and transmitting it to Earth should not be a mystery to us in this 21st century. Communications satellites already do it routinely. One significant obstacle to power applications, however, is regulatory: there is no spectrum allocated to power transmission, as there is for communications.
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Looking at the major cost areas again, for the wholesale utility market space solar power is currently about a factor of 2 too expensive with regard to cost of materials and components, and at least a factor of 10 on the launch cost side. Both cost barriers have realistic chances of being overcome in the next decade.
The prospects for space-based solar power are at least as bright as for fusion power; these two options were identified as the only long-term sustainable energy sources in a report published in Science magazine last year (6). While space solar power has received essentially no government funding for two decades, fusion gets close to $1 billion/year.
The ITER fusion project scheduled for completion in 2014 will cost $5 billion for a research reactor that produces only thermal power – in contrast the 1995 “Fresh look” (7) study for space solar power found some systems with an estimated cost of $6 to $8 billion, producing 250 MW electric available for commercial sale, readily expandable to several GW and a profitable return on investment. With some further research those numbers can likely be improved upon, but the funding has been terminated rather than increased.
We already have an immense fusion reactor working for us in our solar system, ultimately responsible for almost all our energy choices. All we really need to do is make better use of it by tapping into it more directly.
Any rational energy policy for the United States must support the steps needed to make that happen: increased investment in reducing launch costs, reserving radio frequency spectrum for power transmission, and moving towards a billion dollars per year in a robust and diverse program of R&D on space solar power.