The European Space Agency will this week likely approve a three-year study to see if having huge solar farms in space could work and be cost effective.
The eventual aim is to have giant satellites in orbit, each able to generate the same amount of electricity as a power station.
Research ministers will consider the idea at a Paris meeting on Tuesday.
Satellites with solar panels would need to be around 1.7km long – more than double the size of the world’s tallest building and an order of magnitude bigger than the current largest structure in space, which is the International Space Station, measuring 110m
Josef Aschbacher, who is Esa’s director general, told BBC News that he believed that solar power from space could be of ”enormous” help to address future energy shortages.
”We do need to convert into carbon neutral economies and therefore change the way we produce energy and especially reduce the fossil fuel part of our energy production,” he said.
”If you can do it from space, and I’m saying if we could, because we are not there yet, this would be absolutely fantastic because it would solve a lot of problems.”
The Sun’s energy can be collected much more efficiently in space because there is neither night nor clouds. The idea has been around for more than 50 years, but it has been too difficult and too expensive to implement, until maybe now.
In accordance with Esa’s own projections, an independent UK government evaluation found that it could be feasible to have a satellite capable of producing the equivalent amount of electricity as a power plant, or roughly 2 GW, by 2040. However, Dr. Vijendran asserts that it might be accomplished in less than ten years with more financing and political support, similar to the timetable set by US President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to send an American astronaut to the moon’s surface.
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