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William Schreiber

Global warming is now almost universally accepted as a serious problem caused by human
activity ± mainly burning fossil fuels ± that demands strong remedial action as soon as possible.
Past events, such as the temporary boycott by some of the major petroleum producers in the ¶70s,
showed that the US also has a national security problem related to both price and availability of
one of our main energy sources. This note is intended as a contribution to the effort to devise a
comprehensive solution to all aspects of the energy problem.

Many others have also recognized various aspects of the problem and the need for a rapid
response. I have found that most workers in this field have not completely defined the problem,
but nevertheless have some favorite solutions to be exclusively pursued.

When I began my engineering education long ago, I was lucky enough to have had the tutelage
of experienced engineers, not scientists. They all said (preached, actually) that the indispensable
first step in devising a solution in the real world was to define the problem.

What is the energy problem? It has several parts.

In the early ¶70s, the temporary boycott of the world market by OPEC caused the price of
petroleum to rise dramatically, as petroleum is the most common source of energy used in heat
generation, production, commerce, transportation, and residential facilities. ¢
 
 

 

 
  

 


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   This is now recognized by
nearly everyone as caused by greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, produced by burning
fossil fuels such as petroleum, coal, and natural gas. While nuclear power plants are being
advocated by some, dealing with spent nuclear fuel is as problematic as greenhouse gases, and
energy must be used to produce nuclear fuel. Note there is now a worldwide shortage of nuclear
fuel.

Others are pushing ethanol, which is such a bad idea that it is hard to understand how its use has
become as widespread as it has.

Ethanol¶s production consumes nearly as much energy as it provides, and its use generates
greenhouse gas. With only about 1% of gasoline now replaced by ethanol, some growers of corn
have become rich, but many growers of domestic animals for food are in dire straits because of
the unanticipated rise in the price of feed corn.

Solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power, nuclear power, hydrogen power, methane from
buried organic material, and other renewable power sources are advocated by some, a



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Unless, by some miracle, we find a substitute for petroleum fuel that can be used with the same
technology we use today, takes no energy to produce, has no noxious residue, and has no
unexpected consequences (like raising the price of corn) its adoption will require rebuilding our
entire energy infrastructure. This will be neither easy nor cheap, but if we hope to preserve the
Earth for our descendents, we have no choice but to act now. This will involve diverting
manpower and funds from current uses. If we examine how these resources are now being used,
military applications will be found high on the list. Many of us believe that such diversions
would make our world a better place in which to live. The decisions, of course, will be political,
which is beyond the scope of this short paper.

Though expensive to build, the proposed system, which abandons fossil fuels, should be cheap to
operate, as the fuel, which is sunlight, has no operating cost.

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èll the energy the earth has stored and almost all of the energy it receives every day comes from
the Sun. èbout 89,000 terawatts (1 TW = a million million (quadrillion) watts) falls on the Earth,
while total usage (in 2004) was only 15 terawatts, of which 87% was provided by fossil fuels.
Their use produces most of the global warming that has become so obvious. If we were to get
most of our useable energy from the Sun, we would solve many of the most important problems,
including the price and availability of petroleum as well as 
 



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 "

(ènybody who does not realize how advantageous this would be is urged to read Seymour
Hersh¶s ³ènnals of National Security´ in     of 5 March 2007.)

Cleaning carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases such as water vapor) from the Earth¶s
current atmosphere is not one of my fields of expertise, but greatly reducing the rate at which we
increase it is clearly a good idea. (Perhaps we shall discover that if we stop adding these gases to
the atmosphere, the existing unwanted gases will slowly dissipate.) è way to do this is to move
to an electrical economy, producing electricity from sunlight, and then replacing as much of
other fuels as possible by electricity. There is cost associated with this, but mostly new
technology is not required. The one field in which this is not yet completely possible is
transportation, where better batteries (or their functional equivalent) are needed. Fortunately, we
still have a lot of competence in developing new technology, in spite of losing a good part of our
manufacturing skills. (è very promising battery project is underway at MIT.)

Solar power at present is faulted for being available only during clear days, for requiring
expensive solar cells of limited efficiency and life, and for not having enough space for the
receptors in crowded areas such as cities. This proposal concentrates on dealing with these
issues.
  
When I was teaching in India in the ¶60s, I learned that some irrigation pumps were solar-
powered without using any electrical components. Small collectors concentrated sunlight
sufficiently to produce steam of high enough temperature and pressure to operate water pumps.
(The motivation was that pilferage of electrical components, even copper wire, was then a
problem in the outlying areas where the apparatus was often located.) This idea is one of the
elements in the proposal.

The other [idea] is to collect the sunlight on large steerable, focusable mirrors in geostationary
orbit that would direct the reflected light onto much smaller receptors on the ground.

(The orbits would be inclined so that the mirrors would never be in the shadow of the earth.)
Initially, the receptors would be located near existing hydroelectric plants, where solar-powered
pumps would be used to move water up into the lake(s) behind the dam(s) for energy storage. èt
NèSè, we have the skills to develop such devices as the mirrors and perhaps even have the
money if we give up such projects as the space station, which produce no noticeable benefits for
mankind. Should the initial installations prove workable, new plants could be built in more
remote locations.

Solar power like the kind I saw in India is still used to some extent in the U.S. Heating of
swimming pools seems to be the largest application. Some is used for domestic hot water and
some for space heating. Numerous small companies are in the business of making and selling the
collectors and the receptors for the various applications. The same is true today in India.

 

The orbiting mirrors would be, perhaps, a mile in diameter. They would be constructed as
transparent inflatable thin balloons, one of the inside surfaces of which would be aluminized to
provide the reflecting surface for the required concave mirror. The mirrors would be lifted into
orbit while folded, the inflated shape being determined by the thickness of the plastic or other
material and by the pressure. It is likely that spherical reflectors would be adequate, and the focal
length could be adjusted by the pressure, thus avoiding high precision in their manufacture.
Communication satellites already use slanted orbits and incorporate sufficiently accurate steering
mechanisms.

Note that since the Sun apparently moves through the sky while the mirror apparently remains
fixed to viewers on the Earth, the angle of incidence of the sunlight on the mirror changes. Thus
the mirror must be constantly redirected. This is preferably done by using feedback from small
sensors located around the edge of the mirror to the steering mechanism of the satellite carrying
the mirror. These same sensors can also be used to adjust the focal length of the concave
reflector by adjusting the air pressure inside the plastic balloon so that the incident beam just fills
the receptor surface.
èt the surface of the Earth, incoming solar radiation in clear weather averages something over
300 watts/sq. meter, but it is much higher and nearly constant above the atmosphere.
Measurements show the ³solar constant´ to be about 1366 watts/sq. meter.

è reflector about 5000 feet in diameter thus collects about 3000 megawatts, which is comparable
to the capacity of a typical terrestrial electric power plant.

I am guessing that collectors might be 500 feet in diameter, but this must be verified. The
fraction of the collected power that would be received by the collectors depends on the weather,
and the fraction of that which becomes useful heat to make steam and drive pumps remains to be
seen.

Close to populated areas, it may be necessary to stop the transmission at night. For these reasons,
storage of the collected energy is essential, which makes the use of dams holding pumped water
a vital part of these systems. The ability to defocus the mirrors is also important.

One of the reasons for using the solar energy directly to produce steam and drive pumps is that
solar electric cells, besides being expensive, are not very efficient in converting light into
electricity, and need replacement from time to time. èt best, the efficiency is about 20%, the rest
of the light energy appearing as heat, which limits the intensity of light that can be handled.
There is no such limitation when converting the incoming power into steam, but there probably
are some limitations from safety considerations. However the efficiency is surely higher than that
of solar cells.

c  
It has been known for some time that thousands of pieces of debris, some very large but most
very small, abandoned from previous launches, are in orbit around the Earth. Some objects that
have been returned, such as shuttle vehicles, have been found to have suffered minor damage
from impact with small pieces. This raises concern for us, since the mirrors we propose to place
in orbit are actually quite fragile. Fortunately, almost all space junk is in much lower orbit, where
it will eventually burn up as it enters the Earth¶s atmosphere.

There are two possible approaches to deal with this problem. One is to make the mirrors less
fragile by abandoning the balloon approach and providing a structure to support a single-surface
properly shaped mirror. The other is to provide redundancy by placing two or more mirrors in
orbit for each receiving location on the ground. The balloon approach is very attractive because it
enables focus to be controlled by pressure, rather than making and then placing in orbit a very
precise mirror.

èlthough the redundancy approach seems better to me, my inclination is to leave the final
decisions to the engineers who will do the actual design, hopefully from NèSè.

   
This proposal need not be the only scheme used. Higher efficiency in systems that do burn
carbon-containing fuels would lessen, but not eliminate contamination of the atmosphere.
Conservation, wind power, tidal power, and any other schemes that do not burn fossil or carbon-
containing fuels may also be used. I have no special knowledge about hydrogen fuel cells, except
to note that water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. Carbon sequestration seems to involve
significant new technology and does not free us from the grip of OPEC.

     
Many of the numbers used here are from Wikipedia, ³World energy resources and
consumption.´ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy:_world_resources_and_consumption

This piece also has a very good list of additional references. It is well written and apparently
accurate. However it uses the words ³energy´ and ³power´ as synonyms in many instances,
much to the discomfort of technically trained persons, such as myself. In this paper, I have used
these two terms only in their technical sense. Power (typical unit is watt) is the rate of providing
energy (typical units are BTU ± British thermal units ± or joules).