Emrod has just demonstrated its wireless power beaming technology to Airbus and the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of the ESA's new push toward 24-hours-a-day space-based solar power. The idea of space-based solar is not new. The problem has always been size; you'd need transmitters and receivers about 2 km (1.2 miles) in diameter to shift a couple of gigawatts of energy down to Earth from a geostationary orbit some 36,000 km (22,370 miles) away. Building an array that size on Earth would be a huge challenge. Building one in space? Yikes.

Emrod says its near-field energy beams could get the job done much more efficiently than competing technologies. But Emrod founder Greg Kushnir also thinks there's a much cheaper and easier way to satisfy European – and indeed global – renewable energy needs: by setting up a global wireless energy matrix capable of beaming power instantaneously around the planet, using lower-orbiting satellites that could be significantly smaller. You'd get 24-hour renewable energy, anywhere, out of low-cost solar assets right here on Earth.

We wrote back in 2016 about GEIDCO's proposal for a global, interconnected renewable energy grid running through tens of thousands of miles of ultra high-voltage power lines. Emrod's World Energy Matrix concept would need far less ground- and ocean-floor-based infrastructure, eliminating a ton of planning and execution headaches – or at least replacing those headaches with new orbital ones. But if you built a giant solar array in the Sahara desert in Libya, then just as the midday sun is beating down and creating maximum power, you could send that energy right across to power Shanghai as the sun begins to set.