Powered by the Moon.

[Workingman]

A new report by the UK Space Agency is looking at the feasibility of harnessing energy from the Sun using satellites to beam it down to Earth using lasers - sort of a scaled down version of a Dyson Sphere.

A Dyson Sphere is supposedly what a super intelligent civilisation would use to get free energy by surrounding its star with solar panels. For us it would mean producing 55 trillion sq km of panels. Unfortunately the solar system is predicted to end in three billion or so years (a time problem).... and it does not contain enough mass to produce the panels. We need to look elsewhere.

So, back to UKSA and its satellites. Not long ago such a thing as currently being looked at would have been economically and technologically impractical if not impossible, but things have changed. We are not there yet, and might never be, but it is not impossible for such things to be used to power individual cities to ease the load for the rest.

Then I found the Moon.

NASA, ESA, China, Japan and a whole consortium of companies are seriously looking at building lunar collectors to beam electricity via lasers to Earth - the Luna Ring. Many of the raw materials exist on the Moon and a production facility similar to the ISS concept could be put in orbit by as early as 2035. It will be here long before fusion and will free up land on Earth currently used for windmills and solar panels in order to feed us.