It's 2035, and across the bright tropics and the world's deserts, huge solar arrays gather the sun's energy to generate electricity to be sent down to grids deploying newly-perfected wireless power transmission. Enough energy is stored to allow night-time power generation after sunset.
On millions of homes and offices, affordable and efficient solar panels and power-generating windows provide further smaller-scale energy generation in situ during daylight hours. People drive zero-emission cars that were developed back in the 2010s by major automakers like Audi, BMW, Toyota and Honda that run on hydrogen fuel – created using solar energy that splits waste water into hydrogen and oxygen. And as night falls, humanity gazes up at new glints amid the stars – giant orbiting solar arrays harvesting power 24/7 in the eternal sunlight of space, sent back to Earth via microwave or laser beams to giant ground receptors.Fantasy? Far from it. The idea of solar power – and its potential to be Earth's dominant power source – has roots way back before the threat of climate change and depletion of easy to reach fossil fuels. The first solar energy cell was developed back in 1883, while writer Isaac Asimov published a 1941 story, Reason, describing a space station beaming down vast amounts of solar energy using microwave beams. US scientist Peter Glaser drew up plans in 1968 to make Asimov's dreams a reality, only to be stymied by the technological limitations of the time.
But technologies for a solar-powered world are here today, quieting critics who claim global solar power will never overcome issues over long-distance transmission from sunny to less sunny areas, or find storage solutions to allow it to carry on generating power when it gets dark.
China, for instance, is already building high-voltage power lines to spread o
