Solving economics, energy, carbon and climate in a single project

A vigorous economy needs cheap energy. A sustainable economy, if it is to grow and prosper, needs more: energy that is cheap, clean and abundant. Renewable electricity at 1-2 cents per kWh would enable synthetic oil at $30-50 per bbl. Three cents per kWh would displace coal. Current and projected renewable energy sources are several times too expensive. Space-based solar energy from power satellites is clean enough, but has to date been far too expensive. This paper is an analysis of an affordable new approach to building and orbiting power satellites. Located in GEO, power satellites are in sunlight 99% of the time, eliminating the high cost of energy storage. Getting the energy to Earth via microwaves incurs a relatively small cost. Power satellites scale to more than ten times all current energy consumption. The problem has been the cost of lifting parts for power satellites to geosynchronous orbit. This article describes a way to reduce the cost of transporting power satellite parts to GEO by a factor of 100.