I did a little work with Ralph Nansen a few years ago, which really helped me to see the value of space-based solar power. It’s a solution whose time might have arrived. I’ll be watching for the reports from this announcement!

I’m currently extremely interested in how the land-based infrastructure can be part of a multi-layered system, supporting agriculture or perhaps biofuel algae tanks, as well as ensuring the receiver is built with as low an embodied energy cost as possible. For example, earthen walls and structures are very legitimate construction techniques in many of the places you might site a receiver.

As I understand it energy is generally entropic and will break down into heat. So if you add a lot of energy to a system you will probably get a lot of heat.

I look at the earth as a system which requires a proper balance of energy entering and escaping in order for it to remain hospitable for people.

Greenhouse gasses cause more energy to be trapped in the system. If there is too much of a greenhouse effect then not enough energy will escape the system and it’ll get too warm for us. So we don’t like excessive greenhouse gasses.

If we instead beam energy to earth aren’t we facing the same problem? Instead of not enough energy escaping the system we have to much entering it.

I’m no expert here so I’d love to hear why I’m wrong because otherwise this sounds like some great technology.