A mainland space agency says the government should build solar power stations in space to solve China's energy problems.
The China Academy of Space Technology, a research institute under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, said on its website on Thursday that it had submitted a plan to the central government to build a massive facility in space to capture solar power and relay it to earth to generate electricity.
Li Ming, deputy director of the academy, received enthusiastic feedback on the ambitious plan at a conference on Wednesday that included senior officials from the National Development and Reform Commission, the National Energy Administration and other agencies, the statement said.
The mainland is home to the world's largest manufacturing plants of solar panels, and with the bankruptcy of three US manufacturers in the last month, mainland companies now dominate the world supply, accounting for almost three-fifths of total capacity, a report in The New York Times said yesterday.
Economies of scale, low wages and technological advances have enabled Chinese companies to make solar panels cheaply, firing up mainland space scientists' ambitions.
Professor Wang Xiji, a key drafter of the proposal, wrote an article in the Ministry of Science and Technology newspaper Science Times saying that China had built up a solid industrial foundation, acquired sufficient technology and had enough money to carry out the most ambitious space project in history.
Once completed, the solar station, with a capacity of 100MW, would span at least one square kilometre, dwarfing the International Space Station and becoming the biggest man-made object in space, he wrote.
