Europe aims to be climate-neutral by 2050 – an economy with ‘Net Zero’ greenhouse gas emissions. It will take a major shift in our continent’s power sector towards renewable power sources to make this ambition feasible.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that renewables will make up nearly 90% of electricity generation by 2050, propelled largely by solar and wind power. But that will open up a supply gap, because these sources are intermittent by nature. Storage solutions such as batteries can help close this gap to some extent but are not a complete solution to provide a fully reliable and stable grid. The need will still be there for ‘baseload’ clean energy sources – that are available on a continuous, uninterrupted basis.
Space Based Solar Power is a promising solution to closing this gap. Power beamed down from space would be clean, scalable, affordable and available anywhere in the world.
Modal de medios
With global energy budgets measured in the trillions of euros, the cost of a first gigawatt-scale solar power satellite has been estimated at approximately €20 billion, equivalent to the construction of a new nuclear power plant. Later duplicated units would benefit from mass-production and economies of scale, thereby reducing build costs substantially, resulting in baseload power generation more than half as cheaply as nuclear, around the same unit price as that from large-scale terrestrial solar plants.
Modal de medios
Solaris 2023 System study results
Solaris views on NASA SBSP report
mantente informado
Suscríbete a nuestro boletín para recibir las últimas noticias, actualizaciones de misiones y contenido exclusivo directamente en tu bandeja de entrada. Sé el primero en conocer nuestros próximos proyectos y avances.