"Energy prices must be adjusted to reflect their full cost, including certain environmental costs, so that energy consumers everywhere know what are the consequences of their actions and preferences, so that resource use is optimized in terms of investment in supply and energy efficiency, and so that investment funds can be mobilized on a world scale." The technology exists to create an energy and fuel system that is sustainable and compatible with existing investments in infrastructure and transportation. Energy from space is environmentally benign especially compared to existing methods of generating electricity generation based on thermal conversion systems. Hydrogen produced from energy from space offers a transportation method, a storage method, and a basis for synthetic liquid fuels. A hydrogen economy could also utilize off-peak power from other generation methods thus providing a second common link in an integrated energy and fuel system for the 21st century. Finally, the concept of energy from space will require both capital and participation on a global scale. The undertaking to create energy islands in the sky must be on a for profit basis for otherwise the energy will not be available when other sources are exhausted. Profits provide a means for sharing on an equitable basis some of the resources of Greater Earth. However, if the international legal system is used in an attempt to extort moneys, technologies, and other benefits in excess of prudent payment from the industrialized nations then this resource will languish as has the mineral resources of the sea bed. The enterprises of the twenty-first century must be global. They must touch the people of the nations they operate within. To be effective, they must be a unifying force promoting freedom and opportunity. While the proposed information technologies and collaborative development programs will help ensure global access the greatest challenge will be creating the necessary shields against oppression, political corruption, and graft. This forum and the associated working groups provide an opportunity to examine how technology, ecology, and free market economics can be integrated in order to facilitate efforts to improve living conditions via economic development. Wireless power transmission in general and energy from space in particular as foreign aid or a mechanism of foreign exchange offers both technology and policy approaches to problems forcing people, organizations, agencies, and governments to look for different ways to solve pressing problems. Now is the time to engage in coordinated projects to develop technologies to meet the achievable objectives of global space endeavors, and to recognize the constructive and catalytic role that solar energy available in space and on Earth can play in sustaining future development. Strategic planning by the public and private sectors in several countries is underway now to ensure that space power will be able to make an increasingly important contribution to meet global energy demands.
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