0191-9067/80/040383-05$02.00/0 Copyright 0 1980 SUNSAT Energy Council REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON SOLAR POWER SATELLITES HELD IN TOULOUSE, FRANCE JUNE 25-27, 1980 FRANZ R. BROTZEN Rice University This Symposium, sponsored by the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches de Toulouse (C.E.R.T.) and the Sunsat Energy Council, was the first truly international conference dealing with the many aspects of Solar Power Satellites. About 70 scientists attended from Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Israel, Italy, Morocco, Netherlands, Switzerland, and United States. Most of the credit for the initiative, the fine organization and the choice of the pleasant locale of the conference goes to M. Marc Pelegrin, the Director of C.E.R.T., and his coworkers who labored indefatigably to make this an unusually fine symposium in every respect. The objectives of the conference were aptly stated by Mr. Pelegrin in his opening remarks: “. . . to make a contribution to the question: ‘Is the production of solar energy by means of geostationary satellites feasible?”’ The 20 papers presented, the round-table discussions and the panel pointed to possible problems that may have to be overcome but, all in all, gave a clearly affirmative reply to the question posed above. There remain innumerable technical decisions to be made; yet, there is no indication of any obstacles to the construction and operation of SPSs that cannot be surmounted on the basis of existing technology. The serious difficulties may lie in the political and legal areas rather than in the technology of the SPS. Dr. Peter Glaser, Vice President of Arthur D. Little, Inc., Cambridge MA, and President of Sunsat Energy Council, suggested that the criteria for the evaluation of the SPS should center about the following six aspects: Social desirability, economic attractiveness, technical feasibility, ecological impact, political implications, and public acceptance. The Toulouse conference addressed itself to all but the last of the above topics. The social desirability was clearly demonstrated by the projections of world energy demands for the next half century, by the need to conserve scarce resources and by environmental conditions. Projections of energy requirements of developing countries alone indicate a future demand of more than four times that of the 1970 total world energy production. The prospective annual need amounts to an equivalent of 30 billion tons of coal for the developing countries in addition to the more slowly growing needs of the industrialized nations. Considerable details of future world power requirements were given in a paper by M. Claverie and A. Dupas of P1RDES, Paris. These figures alone speak eloquently for the global use of solar energy. The need for conservation of resources coupled with the increasing cost of fossil fuels is, of course, a particularly strong argument for solar energy generation.
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