The future’s bright because it’s sunny! And as the world hurtles toward the 2015 Maslow Window and embraces the spectacular potential of space colonization, it will become increasingly clear that space also provides the solution to Earth’s energy challenges.

21stCenturyWaves.com sees the Sun as the bright spot in our global energy future. Click .

In The Next 500 Years (1995) Adrian Berry celebrates that “we have learned to tap solar energy almost at its source,” meaning satellites. For a clean, environmentally-friendly, endless energy source, we merely build “solar collectors in stationary orbit…(that) continuously transmit energy down to receiving stations on Earth…” The cost would be reduced by using lunar materials which provide an economic payback for colonizing the Moon.

In The Next 200 Years (1976), the seminal futurist and physicist Herman Kahn strikes his typically upbeat tone: “Except for temporary fluctuations caused by bad luck or poor management, the world need not worry about energy shortages or costs in the future.” And although a 21st Century solar power MEP is suggested — “one image of a future world economy visualizes a large part, perhaps one-third, of the Sahara Desert being devoted to solar power production.” — no mention is made of space solar power. This is somewhat surprising because Kahn’s book appeared 8 years after Peter Glaser first proposed solar power satellites.

In The Next 100 Years (2009) forecaster and founder of Stratfor, George Friedman envisions the 2nd half of the 21st Century as the golden age of solar energy because “The American obsession with space will intersect with another intensifying problem: energy.” Friedman forecasts that “vast numbers of photovoltaic cells … will be placed into geostationary orbit or on the surface of the Moon. The electricity will be converted into microwaves, transmitted to the earth, reconverted to electricity, and distributed…”

In a public event that I hosted this week in Orange County, California, Dr. Iraj Ershaghi, the Omar B. Milligan Professor and Director of the Petroleum Engineering Program at the University of Southern California, waxed enthusiastic about the near-term potential for solar energy. Although he’s a world-class oil expert who sees peak oil as still in our future, Ershaghi is convinced that solar energy is the next big thing. He advocates that the U.S. burn through its devisive energy politics and focus major resources on increasing the efficiency of solar technology, with an eye toward eventually expanding solar collection into space.

According to Friedman, by the 2060s, space-based energy will be “a feature of everyday life.” And more importantly, the United States “will become the largest energy producer in the world.” Friedman believes that “space will become more important than Saudi Arabia ever was, and the United States will control it.”

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