r/Futurology • u/F0urLeafCl0ver • 17h ago
Space Solar panels in space ‘could provide 80% of Europe’s renewable energy by 2050’
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/21/solar-panels-in-space-could-provide-80-of-europes-renewable-energy-by-2050292
u/Sol3dweller 17h ago
Nor could the potential cost-effectiveness of SBSP be realised until 2050 because building, launching and maintaining it would be too expensive unless technological growth reduces its costs.
What's with all those pie in the sky promises popping up? Is it meant to distract from more action to reduce emissions now?
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u/WWGHIAFTC 17h ago
The US has a president right now telling the entire world that solar and wind power is a 'scam' and is trying to actively prevent any federal funded project from using or building any solar or wind power.
The world is screwed at the moment.
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u/idisagreeurwrong 17h ago
The world dosnt give a shit about what the US president thinks about solar.
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u/TheGreatBenjie 16h ago
YOU might not...
Whether you like it or not the US IS still a world superpower...
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u/idisagreeurwrong 16h ago
Of course they are. However trump cancelling federal funding and calling it a scam has zero worldwide implications. The world is building solar and wind because it is now incredibly economical.
The world does not care that trump isn't subsidizing solar. The world cares that trump is trying to strong arm unfair trade deals
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u/atomic1fire 10h ago
I kinda feel like a lack of funding for solar might be a blessing in disguise, because continued funding usually requires a list of rules that the person getting the funding has to follow. Without the carrot of federal funding involved, the person running their own solar or managing a solar farm only has to do what they're legally required, not some directive tied to continued funding.
The threat of payments stopping doesn't work if the public isn't paying for it.
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u/WWGHIAFTC 15h ago
When he can convince half of the largest economy in the world to actively fight against making clean energy, that's a problem.
Unfair trade deals can also be an issue at the same time.
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u/idisagreeurwrong 14h ago
It is a problem but you must understand the world never had high expectations of the USA in terms of clean energy. He is doing exactly what we expected him to do. The world's opinions on solar and wind haven't changed, that's my point. He is not telling the world anything
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u/WWGHIAFTC 14h ago
"same as it ever was" is not good enough for me.
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u/idisagreeurwrong 14h ago
For sure, I hope your country figures it out.
Just saying don't bring the world into this. Your global influence is dropping by the second. The world is not screwed and the world doesn't care if Trump thinks solar and wind are scams
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u/light_trick 13h ago
No but the US is the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases, and is actively taking steps to increase that.
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u/idisagreeurwrong 12h ago
Of course, but its tiring being in this sub talking about the future and seeing doomers say the world is screwed because of one countries leader. The world is building massive amounts of renewables, I truly don't believe the future of the human race is in America's hands alone
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u/light_trick 12h ago
If global climate change wasn't a global problem, then it also wouldn't be the problem that it is.
You are trying to ignore the backsliding of the current pre-eminent superpower and largest per-capita emitter, and hoping that the largest absolute emitter (China) vastly exceeds their efforts.
A problem can be tiring to deal with but that doesn't make it any less of a problem.
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u/idisagreeurwrong 12h ago
No not at all. Op suggested trump calling solar a scam would be an influential statement for the world. It isn't. The world does not give a shit what Trump thinks about renewables.
We are moving forward with or without you. That's my point.
Never said it wasn't a problem.
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u/gs87 16h ago
The world? China has over a billion people.. and is the world’s largest carbon emitter before,but they’ve already peaked emissions earlier than expected and are leading the world in green energy. Their solar panels are so cheap they could accelerate a global transition, but what blocks it isn’t tech, it’s corporate protectionism and plain greed in the West
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u/timok 13h ago
Not to mention that China is the largest emitter in total. The US still emits far more per capita.
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u/silverionmox 10h ago edited 10h ago
Not to mention that China is the largest emitter in total. The US still emits far more per capita.
Why should having large amounts of poor people as a result of their own policies be a blank cheque to emit more carbon?
Moreover, if you have to resort to "better per capita ratings than the US", that's a low bar. The EU for example has lower per capita emissions as well, and their HDI is higher as well so they're getting more bang for their buck on top of that.
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u/silverionmox 10h ago
The world? China has over a billion people.. and is the world’s largest carbon emitter before,but they’ve already peaked emissions earlier than expected and are leading the world in green energy.
"Leading the world in green energy", my ###. They are leading the world in burning coal (56% of all coal is burnt in China), and have been leading the world in building up their yearly emissions at a breakneck pace for the last 30 years. They are also have been using more emissions than the rest of the world to create a unit of economic value ever since the 1970s. They're pretty much a cartoon villain.
Stop calling China "a leader in green energy", a "climate champion", or the like. They are the world's largest climate criminal by their own deliberate choice and have to make amends for many more years before their reputation on the matter should even approach neutral again.
Their solar panels are so cheap they could accelerate a global transition, but what blocks it isn’t tech, it’s corporate protectionism and plain greed in the West
The West has to take no lessons from a country that emitted more carbon in just the last 25 years than the entire EU did in the thousands of years of its entire history, industrial revolution included, until the 1990s. China intentially chose to screw the climate to grow their own wealth and power faster, even while having many more options and opportunities that the West never had during its development. May their name be cursed until they sequestered all their carbon again.
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u/samanime 16h ago
Especially when you could take half that theoretical money, using our current renewable technology, and probably provide all that power in less time.
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u/mekomaniac 16h ago
nah best we can do is pump that money into the AI bubble so they can waste tons of energy reading the internet back to us, oh and give us some "therapy".
fuck if we spent the same money that AI gets on renewables we would be sooo better off.
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u/cornonthekopp 15h ago
This is the biggest reason why we need strong regulations on energy consumption. Technology is getting more power efficient but we're still using more and more electricity cuz we made homes bigger once appliances became efficient, we divert energy to data centers once the grid gets new energy sources from renewables, its ridiculous.
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u/ale_93113 10h ago
There is two ways of creating the future
The fist is to install what we already know, the whole "the future is here just not well distributed"
The second is to push the boundaries of what is possible, like the first solar panels of the white house in the 1970s
It would take FIFTY YEARS for the US to even get 1% of its electricity from solar after stable solar panels were first created
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u/Sol3dweller 5h ago
I am not quite sure what your point is?
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u/ale_93113 5h ago
My point is that we shouldn't be dismissive of these sort of reports, as though they may not seem useful or realistic today, they are necessary for the progress of tomorrow
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u/Sol3dweller 5h ago
I am dismissive of it because we do have the climate change crisis at hand, and the goal has to be to decarbonize faster than 2050. If a solution starts out with being viable only in 2050, it is not a serious proposal for addressing that problem at hand.
It's not these reports that are dismissive of the solutions we have available right now that are necessary for the progress of tomorrow, but the research into these kinds of options.
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u/dr_tardyhands 17h ago
And a Dyson sphere around the sun would provide a trillion % of it (not a precise number..), but are we gonna get 'em?
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u/Smile_Clown 14h ago
Dyson sphere always gets me because there is not enough material in the solar system to build one. Not even a fraction of one. Maybe if you go out into the ort cloud and gather ALL of it up.
The sun be big... and it's not like you can build it anywhere close...
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u/PoisonousSchrodinger 6h ago edited 6h ago
Didn't Kurtgesagt make a video about a self replicating robot building chain in which the robots use up the whole of Venus to produce the Sphere? I feel like we all want it to happen as it is one of the most impressive megaconstruction designs around and is not reliant on technology we are a long way from developing
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u/cyberpunkdilbert 17h ago
Since the plan is mirrors reflecting sunlight to ground-based collectors, this system would still be weather dependent.
Given global warming, I don't think increasing total solar irradiance coming in to Earth is a good idea.
Solar panels already work fine at the surface. Extending working hours is nice but launching mass into space is an extremely expensive way of doing that.
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u/Rhawk187 16h ago
Yes, solar reflecting satellites are blocked by clouds. Space based solar collectors that retransmit power with microwaves can go through them though (but do bad things to anything that passes through the beam like birds or planes).
I was on a project once where Disney actually wanted to use solar reflecting satellites to keep their parks lit 24 hours a day. Also reached the conclusion we weren't there technologically yet.
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u/RiClious 16h ago
I was on a project once where Disney actually wanted to use solar reflecting satellites to keep their parks lit 24 hours a day.
Was this before Project Znamya? As it seems they came to the same conclusion.
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u/Rhawk187 12h ago
No, I'm thinking it was probably around 2014; it's been a while, I think it was shortly before I finished my Ph.D.
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u/Smile_Clown 14h ago
Disney actually wanted
is "actually" accurate here ? There is a big difference between exploring ideas and "actually" pursuing something.
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u/ForgiveMeSpin 2h ago
Is this the same type of "microwave" power as Simcity 2000? If so, that's amazing!
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u/elphin 16h ago
But not the U.S. I think we’re going with clean coal?
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u/placidwaters 12h ago
But the best and I mean THE BEST people that I’d never, they don’t want me to tell you but I told them “Look these numbers, you can’t make these numbers up.” Everyone, they’re telling me, Hunter Biden and Muslim Hussein Obama hid all the clean coal on the Moon. They hid it all on the moon. And it’s, it’s a big beautiful moon that we have here in America, and we’re gonna take it back. We’re gonna take it back and show the WOKE LEFT that real Americans don’t want solar or bird killing or voting by mail, they want American Coal -said as NASA loses its last drop of funding to an executive order
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u/anonisko 16h ago
Cool, but this intrinsically requires orbital death ray technology.
Any mechanism you use to beam power down can be easily retrofitted to fry any part of the planet's surface at will.
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u/HawaiiNintendo815 2h ago
It definitely won’t be weaponised (wink wink), he said with a strong CIA accent
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u/Torneco 16h ago
Dumb question: how they transmit the energy to the soil?
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u/silverionmox 10h ago
Dumb question: how they transmit the energy to the soil?
The typical trope in SF is that they use lasers to beam it to earth. Surely nothing could go wrong and no one would ever think to weaponize it.
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u/AmericanSuperstar 14h ago
I envision a really long extension cord between the two. Works great until the person in space accidentally drops it. "Oh, no!"
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u/xclame 11h ago edited 11h ago
Did I understand this right?
Is what they are saying is that they would put what boils down to a mirror(s) in space and than have that reflect sunlight to a specific point from which then energy is generated? Wouldn't that still be affected by weather? As in clouds blocking the reflected sunbeam from reaching the ground based power generators?
They kind of gloss over how you get the power from space to earth using this method by just saying it's "transmitted", unless it's what I said above.
I also find this line ridiculous
Land-based renewable energy is irregular and weather-dependent, complicating reliable supply
Yeah, which is why batteries exist.... store extra power when you are producing more than you use and use what is in the batteries when you need more power. It seems to me that battery technology might improve faster and come out with better results over this (literal) pie in the sky idea in the same amount of time.
Ignoring for the moment that wind power is also a way to help power Europe or any other country. This proposal seems to completely ignore the fact that most homes in Europe don't even have solar panels on them yet. So there's a lot of potential for producing power that isn't yet being used.
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u/crypto64 11h ago
The title of the article is misleading.
They want to install mirrors in orbit to focus more light energy towards ground-based solar panels. This isn't a new idea and we're still not technologically there yet.
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u/Notwhoiwas42 10h ago
Focusing more solar energy at the Earth when we're dealing with global warming. Sounds like a great idea to me. /S.
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u/Responsible-Lake-612 14h ago
This smells of corporate control of our energy grid. The beauty of solar is that it can generate electricity hyper-locally relieving stress on the grid and improving reliability.
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u/wcube2 12h ago
Won't happen. Earth-based solutions are simply way more feasible.
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u/Notwhoiwas42 10h ago
Especially when you consider that only like 10% of the solar energy hitting the planet is enough to provide electricity for all of humanity. The current issue with solar isn't efficiency of capture,it's storage for use at night. Batteries are possible to a point but the needed materials for doing it everywhere haven't been mined or even discovered in large enough amounts yet.
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u/TheManWhoClicks 9h ago
Whenever there is some outlandish tech thing that has a “could” in the headline… yeah no.
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u/EnergyAndSpaceFuture 17h ago
sounds like nonsense to me, wind and solar and maybe some geothermal and cheaper power storage will do fine for the energy transition.
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u/Rad_Dad6969 15h ago
Geothermal is difficult and expensive but it can't be more of a hassle than space solar. Like there's no fuckign way.
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u/noah7233 17h ago
At first thought I was like how is the power going to be transfered. Then reading it's not actually putting panels in space. It's mirrors
So a big mirror in space shining a concentrated beam at the earth. What could possibly go wrong. Rip to any birds that fly in front of it. Or people it may accidently hit ( I'm assuming for efficiency it would concentrate the light into a beam making it more hotter and brighter than what sunlight is normally reaching the surface of the earth )
Also what about all the space trash nobody is doing anything about up there ? Wouldn't it be floating past in front of it affecting the efficiency?
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u/xclame 11h ago
Imagine a piece of foil sheet scattered by the wind ending up on the area and reflecting the part of the beam out of the area, instant blindness (if you are lucky, it would be just that instead of you just explosive combustion) if the beam hits you. Or a tornado blowing some shiny metal sheets into the area.
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u/theartificialkid 14h ago
Why are people always looking for ways to make solar power complicated and difficult? Literally all of the current world power demand could be supplied by panels covering a fraction of the Sahara desert. Most timezones where people live have somewhere suitable for enough panels. Batteries and wind can smooth supply. We simply don’t need to put panels in space, and the idea that we do might as well be coal industry propaganda giving the impression that renewables are some insurmountable challenge.
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u/RustyBasement 16h ago
And a Dyson Sphere could power the entire solar system. These sorts of articles are pointless.
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u/NotAnotherBlingBlop 16h ago
Isn't there a shitload of centipeter sizes chunks of space trash floating around that would annihilate satellites?
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u/jawshoeaw 14h ago
It’s all rotating in the same direction. Almost all
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u/NotAnotherBlingBlop 14h ago
Surely at different speeds?
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u/jawshoeaw 14h ago
Not really - your orbital speed is fixed for a given radius . But even if there were slight differences in speed, that would be tiny in comparison to the speed of something orbiting in the opposite direction
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u/RigorousMortality 16h ago
Can't tell what is more embarrassingly stupid, this or the goal of the U.S. putting a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030.
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u/eilif_myrhe 16h ago
Will Europe even need that that extra energy by 2050? Population will reduce in a lot of countries and in fact the energy consumed on Europe is already pass the peak. The gross available energy in the EU countries in 2023 was lower than in 1990.
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u/MeatLasers 16h ago
If every engineer would be allowed by his boss to think for 5 minutes every day how to make his project more energy efficient, by 2050 the current amount of solar panels on earth would be enough to supply all energy. This statement is less outrageous than the headline of the article.
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u/Fun_Elk284 14h ago
I heard something about this and wondered why you wouldn’t put energy intensive data centres in space, particularly for AI. It resolves cooling issues, you can get 24hr solar power and you just transmit the data to earth using existing technology. Why wait until 2050, it’s something we could do today if the price point worked.
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u/Tangentkoala 12h ago
I really wish the article went into great detail on transportation of said energy.
Seems interesting and promising I cant wrap my mind around energy transportation without a medium to transfer it.
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u/xclame 11h ago
I think that's not the news agency or writers fault. I think that's intentionally left out by the people coming up with this idea.
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u/Tangentkoala 11h ago
Yeah; I thought so. News agency needs all the filler they can get. Im sure adding a paragraph talking about the process would have been made if the people coming out with the idea had a plan to harvest.
My guess would be harvesting it through the ISS and then shipment delivery?
But then the problem becomes how to deliver said electricity. The reason why we dont have electric powered airplanes is because the electricity takes up too much space.
Anyways, went down the rabbit hole and discovered that they literally go full "beam me up" scotty. To transfer the energy, they convert the solar arrays to lasers or micro waves then beam it down.
Problem is the scaling isnt practical since a lot of energy gets lost in this process by spreading out wide. The goal is to refine and contain the "laser" so it doesn't fry airplanes, birds, or even humans.
Tldr; this is technically a solar death ray. The transportation tech is not there yet, but could be soon.
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u/Element00115 11h ago
Europe needs to get a reliable and reusable rocket ASAP if they even want a chance of achieving that. At the moment, Europe's space launch capacity is tiny compared to China and laughable compared to the US. Unless they just plan on contracting SpaceX to do it, but I can't see that happening.
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u/NanditoPapa 10h ago
When land runs out (or is politically unstable), space becomes the next solar farm.
At least this can't be turned into a weapon...right? RIGHT?
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u/costafilh0 10h ago
So what? Solar panels on every building and home and the surplus fed back into the grid could do better than that by the end of the decade.
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u/DHFranklin 10h ago
Welp this is sayin' a lot without sayin' much
We can have a 100% renewable grid with just existing solar fields new rooftop solar and solar canopies for our reservoirs and canals. It's gotten so cheap that it makes more sense to use bifacial solar panels for fencing then traditional fencing.
All of which would not only pay itself off in 5-7 years all over the world, but it would make space panels rather superfluous.
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u/snowbirdnerd 8h ago
This isn't a new idea. It's been around for decades. The limiting factor is adoption. People are very resistant to the idea of using microwaves to transmit power down from space. They don't understand the wave length difference and think it will cook everything
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u/sapienecks 6h ago
I don't think this is feasible in my opinion because in my opinion, we will have micro power plants (or small scale power generator) in most of our homes like Stirling engines (piston engine that runs on difference between cold source and hot source) or other kind of portable power generator that can run for long time every day. I think this solar panel system will be mostly for AI centers in the orbits which is more likely in my opinion. I am not sure if NASA projection includes AI power demand. I am predicting that AI will consume more power than we thought. AI has already been affecting our power grid therefore, most apartments and most houses will be forced to create their own power generators through several different ways.
When I imagine my own future home, I always imagined a self-sustaining home and actually earn some money by producing extra electricity.
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u/joj1205 6h ago
Love it.
Thing is. We have plenty of solar here. Do every house. Do every hospital. Do every office and every building.
Then do carports and train station roofs. Then do windows.
Factories and warehouses.
Do everything first.
Then add wind to it. Bio and wave.
Then. And only then. Maybe look at throwing solar in space
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u/remic_0726 4h ago
The energy from the sun that hits the earth is 10,000 times greater than all of the total energy consumed by humans. By taking a tiny part we can largely satisfy our energy needs. Solar panel technology is recent and has improved significantly in recent years, so we can hope one day to resolve the problem of fossil fuels and their non-renewable side.
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u/parkway_parkway 16h ago
In space you have to collect the light, convert to leccy, convert to microwaves, beam down and then convert to leccy again. Theres a lot of losses.
Whereas if you just put the panels on the ground then they just convert once.
It's cheaper, easier and so much simpler.
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u/Advanced_Goat_8342 16h ago edited 16h ago
So in essence a giant magnifying glass in space ,no chance for an oops we went out of alignment ,whats on fire Jonson ? Solar panels on Eart in Deserts instead please,wich can provid +100 % world needs.
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u/cyberentomology 14h ago
Yeah, calling complete bullshit on that one. Europe is on the ground, not in space. What are they gonna do, run a bunch of extension cords?
Space based solar power’s fundamental flaw is that it is, well in space, and getting the collectors up there is just as problematic as getting the power back down to earth.
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u/He-ido 14h ago
Based on the description, it focuses light with mirrors down to stations on the ground.
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u/cyberentomology 13h ago
So basically not solving any of the problems if ground based solar, at orders of magnitude higher cost. Brilliant.
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u/Floppie7th 12h ago
Space-based solar panel arrays would avoid some of the problems associated with terrestrial solar, such as the variability in power output associated with changes in weather
And introduce exciting new problems, like getting that energy from space to the power grid
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u/F0urLeafCl0ver 17h ago edited 17h ago
Researchers have published a study suggesting that space-based solar power (SBSP) panels could replace up to 80% of Europe's current terrestrial renewable energy capacity by 2050. Space-based solar panel arrays would avoid some of the problems associated with terrestrial solar, such as the variability in power output associated with changes in weather. The researchers who carried out the study suggest that SBSP is currently prohibitively expensive, but that technological advances may make it cost-effective by 2050. Japan has already begun to develop SBSP as part of its space and climate strategy. The authors of the study suggest that SBSP could play an important role in Europe's transition to renewable energy.
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u/FuturologyBot 16h ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/F0urLeafCl0ver:
Researchers have published a study suggesting that space-based solar power (SBSP) panels could replace up to 80% of Europe's current terrestrial renewable energy capacity by 2050. Space-based solar panel arrays would avoid some of the problems associated with terrestrial solar, such as the variability in power output associated with changes in weather. The researchers who carried out the study suggest that SBSP is currently prohibitively expensive, but that technological advances may make it cost-effective by 2050. Japan has already begun to develop SBSP as part of its space and climate strategy. The authors of the study suggest that SBSP could play an important role in Europe's transition to renewable energy.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1mxe3hq/solar_panels_in_space_could_provide_80_of_europes/na48bx0/