China aims to use space-based solar energy station to harvest sun’s rays to help meet power needs

Support for the unconventional orbiting solar programme jumped after China announced its 2060 carbon neutral target. Civilian and military researchers will look at applications for the technology amid concerns about radiation and the potential for beams misfired from space. — SCMP

With more than a third of days marred by fog all year round, Chongqing city in southwestern China is not the ideal place for a solar power plant. But soon it will have the nation’s first experimental facility to test a revolutionary technology allowing China to send, and receive, a powerful energy beam from space in about a decade, according to scientists involved in the project.

Harvesting energy from the sun and beaming it to Earth using huge infrastructure in orbit has been regarded as science fiction, but according to a plan by the Chinese government, the nation will put a 1 megawatt solar energy station in space by 2030.