Land will never become the limiting factor on earth, at least not for solar power.
Assuming the worst-case predictions of climate change come true, there will be more than enough desert capacity along the equatorial areas to provide power for the rest.
> Land will never become the limiting factor on earth, at least not for solar power.
What makes you think so? There's always more you can do with more energy. 'Never' is a long time. And there are opportunity costs from other uses you could put land on earth to.
You are right that it will be a while before remote corners on earth become more expensive than space for solar power generation. But not 'never'.
(Btw, if you think really big, the limit for how much power we can use on earth is given by how much waste heat we can radiate into space.
At some point, you don't want to keep beaming down energy from space into earth, even if you somehow could convert 100% of the received power into electricity with no losses: because at the end all the electrical power used will still turn into heat. Heat that we will have to get rid of.
At that point in time, you might want to use the electricity directly in space, eg to run data centres there, and just beam the results of the computations down.)
> Assuming the worst-case predictions of climate change come true, there will be more than enough desert capacity along the equatorial areas to provide power for the rest.
While climate change might become unpleasant, I have no clue what it has to do with any of this? The surface of the earth will stay roughly constant and so will its orbit, and the sun will shine regardless of what happens on earth. (And I assume that if you wanted to badly enough, you could easily float solar panels on top of the ocean; at least easier than blasting them into space.)
> What makes you think so? There's always more you can do with more energy. 'Never' is a long time. And there are opportunity costs from other uses you could put land on earth to.
The entire world's power supply could be met by sacrificing just 3.27% of the US [1]. The Sahara desert is already economically useless as it is completely and utterly inhospitable, unable to support life beyond a few shrubs, insects and felines.
> While climate change might become unpleasant, I have no clue what it has to do with any of this?
Simple, the amount of desertified space will grow, and so space that is now unusable for solar power because it can actually be used at the moment can then be used for power.
> The entire world's power supply could be met by sacrificing just 3.27% of the US [1]. The Sahara desert is already economically useless as it is completely and utterly inhospitable, unable to support life beyond a few shrubs, insects and felines.
So? We can always grow our energy consumption to meet supply.
> Simple, the amount of desertified space will grow, and so space that is now unusable for solar power because it can actually be used at the moment can then be used for power.
The oceans are a lot bigger than all the deserts put together.
When land becomes the limiting factor on earth.