Value chain · CLM-0935
In plain terms
The IPCC's chapter on energy systems mentions space-based solar power once, in a single sentence, among a list of alternative solar technologies that includes solar chimneys. It says the concept takes advantage of continuous sunlight but faces a formidable obstacle: getting the power down safely, efficiently and cheaply. It gives it no cost, no potential figure, no table row and no section of its own.
The claim as recorded
The IPCC's AR6 Working Group III energy-systems chapter treats space-based solar power in ONE SENTENCE of body text across 134 pages, and that sentence names transmission as the blocking problem. Verbatim: "In addition, research proceeds on space-based solar PV, which takes advantage of high insolation and a continuous solar resource (Kelzenberg et al. 2018), but faces the formidable obstacle of developing safe, efficient, and inexpensive microwave or laser transmission to the Earth's surface (Yang et al. 2016)." The chapter assigns it no cost estimate, no deployment potential, no table entry and no subsection. It sits in a paragraph surveying "alternative solar technologies" - solar heating and cooling, solar chimneys, solar fuels - and the very next sentence reads "CSP is the most widely adopted of these alternative solar technologies", placing space-based solar among the not-widely-adopted members of that set.
Evidence behind this: T3: IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group III chapter, an intergovernmental assessment report - the most authoritative energy-systems assessment this register holds. Text layer born-digital and clean: 134 pages, about 5,800 characters per page, zero letterspaced runs and zero hyphen-newline joins, so a raw search is safe on this document and both normalisations were run and changed nothing.
Scope and limits
A SINGLE SENTENCE IS NOT AN ASSESSMENT AND MUST NOT BE READ AS ONE. The chapter neither endorses nor rejects the concept - it surveys it, and the placement among "alternative solar technologies" is the chapter's own arrangement rather than a statement of maturity. THE OBSTACLE IT NAMES IS TRANSMISSION, NOT COST OR SCALE, and it attributes that to one 2016 reference rather than to its own analysis. ONE CHAPTER OF ONE REPORT: WG3 Chapter 6 covers energy systems, and a treatment elsewhere in AR6 is not excluded by this search. NEITHER CITED REFERENCE IS HELD. Kelzenberg et al. 2018 is absent from this register entirely; Yang et al. 2016 is the SSPS-OMEGA design paper, and while SRC-113 is the 2024 Duan OMEGA prototype paper from the same design lineage, it is a different document eight years later and is not a substitute. So the IPCC's two supporting citations for its only SBSP sentence are both unheld.
What it assumes
No assumptions are recorded against this claim.
Where it comes from
Read first-hand on registration. The sentence is present verbatim at PDF p.21. IT DID NOT MATCH ON FIRST SEARCH AND THE REASON IS THE SAME ONE AS CLM-0928's: the document uses a CURLY apostrophe in "Earth's", so a straight-quote search returns nothing. MEASURED OVER THE WHOLE 134-PAGE CHAPTER: "space-based solar" 1, "space solar" 2 (case-insensitive; 1 case-sensitive), both bibliography entries, PDF pp.114 and 134, and ZERO occurrences of rectenna, power beaming, beamed power, SBSP, solar satellite, orbital power or geostationary solar. CONTROLS FROM THE SAME EXTRACTION: renewable 240, electricity 518, emissions 397 - so the extractor reads this document and the zeros are not an extraction failure. The drafting stream measured the same terms with pdftotext and got different control totals but identical zeros, which is the comparison that matters.
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-002 not published in this releaseQST-036 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-0935
CLM-0935, Energy Aperture, as of 2022.