SRC-216

CO2 Emission from Solar Power Satellite. KEO discussion paper G-145, Keio Economic Observatory, Keio University, January 2002.

Published claims resting on this source

• CLM-0818 A 2002 Japanese input-output study estimates that building and launching a 1978-design fleet of 60 solar power satellites would release about 20 grams of carbon dioxide for every kilowatt-hour they generate over an assumed 30-year life, counting carbon dioxide only rather than all greenhouse gases, and counting only production and launch rather than operation.
• CLM-0819 A 2002 Japanese input-output study estimates that if each new satellite were built with electricity from those already working, a fleet of 18 sized to Japan's 1995 electricity supply would come to about 11 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour over an assumed 30-year life, roughly half the study's baseline, counting carbon dioxide only.
• CLM-0820 For comparison in the same units, a 2002 Japanese study of space solar power reports about 22 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour for nuclear, 631 for gas, 846 for oil and 1,225 for coal, which it bases on earlier work by a Keio University research group rather than deriving them in the paper.
• CLM-0821 In a 2002 Japanese study of the 1978 US design, a table splits the estimated carbon dioxide from building and launching the system by part: solar cells are the biggest share at 57 per cent, the ground receiving antennas next at 25 per cent, propellant 11 per cent, the space transport vehicles 6 per cent (almost all of it the vehicle that moves cargo between orbits; the launch rockets themselves are under 1 per cent), and the satellite structure and the space bases under 1 per cent each.
• CLM-0822 In a 2002 Japanese study of the 1978 US design, building the launch rockets and the vehicles that move cargo and crews between orbits accounted for only about 6 per cent of the estimated carbon dioxide from building and launching the system, and adding their propellant brings the combined share to about 17 per cent, a sum the study itself does not give.
• CLM-0823 A 2002 Japanese study's carbon dioxide figures for space solar power come from Japan's 1990 economic input-output tables, with 405 industry sectors; they cover only building and launching the satellites, not running or maintaining them or delivering the power, and assume the satellites run for thirty years at full output around the clock.
• CLM-0824 This is a 2002 discussion paper that says it summarises two 1998 discussion papers by an overlapping group of authors, does not point to any later peer-reviewed version of itself, and cites none of the later UK-led work, which it predates, that redid the analysis by a different method, counting other greenhouse gases as well as carbon dioxide, and got a much higher figure.
• CLM-1462 (low confidence) A 2020 paper's finding that its detailed method gave five to six times the carbon of an earlier, simpler study of the same 1978 design compares a carbon-dioxide-only figure with a figure that also counts other greenhouse gases, and the paper labels the earlier figure two different ways in two places.

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