significant environmental degradation. Having energy available at the flip of a switch as well as for transportation means that countries can close the economic gap between developed and developing countries, improve the health of their people, reduce the destruction of forests, increase the availability of food and ensure the safety of drinking water. In other words having a source of environmentally benign baseload energy will allow for improvements in the environment, and for various cultures to enhance the quality of life of their members. As a result of the concerns expressed above, there is a growing international consensus that environmentally benign renewable and inexhaustible energy sources are required. These systems, almost certainly based on solar energy, will have to be deployed on a macro-engineering scale in order to have measurable global impacts. Continued economic global advancement which minimizes the adverse effects on the Earth's ecology will require energy supplies that do not rely on finite resources, do not produce pollution, and which are not under the political control of any one nation or block of nations such as OPEC or the G-7. This will require applications of advanced technologies based on renewable energy sources on Earth, and solar energy conversion systems in space for use on Earth. The objective must be to engage in successful global development, in order to ensure that humans will not have to consume their own environment, but will be able to keep the Earth habitable for millennia. To achieve this challenging objective, existing as well as new and emerging technologies such as wireless power transmission and the solar energy resources of Greater Earth must be developed. The impact of electricity goes way beyond the everyday convenience of turning on a light, a stove, or a television. It affects education, health and the environment. It unlocks the productive potential of people by enabling them to use power tools and equipment and to keep produce and diary products longer. It provides the cheap, dependable energy that drives mining, industry and business. As a consequence electricity from energy from space could also be the catalyst to trigger economic growth in the entire African continent Energy Demand and Trends In the decades to come, the need for energy will increase dramatically especially if the aspirations of the developing and third world countries are to be met. Figure 2 shows the projected increase in demand from 1990 to 2025. This growing demand will run head long into the decreasing supplies of easily transportable and storable fuels as well as the environmental impacts caused by burning fossil fuels. The unprecedented increase shown in Figure 2 has some rather optimistic assumptions associated with it. First it is assumed that through conservation and increased efficiency the energy consumption per person in the industrialized nations drops by almost a factor of two. The other assumption is that people in the developing countries will be able to have productive economies and a reasonable quality of life
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