0191-9067/83 $3.00 + .00 Copyright ’ 1983 SUNSAT Energy Council INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION JERRY GREY Deputy Secretary-General UNISPACE 82 INTRODUCTION All present power generation systems are basically national in scope, jurisdiction, and delivery. The satellite power system (SPS), on the other hand, is fundamentally international because (1) It operates in space (either in the geostationary or other orbits), which has been declared by the 1947 Outer Space Treaty to be an international regime. (2) It impacts a globally important commodity: energy. (3) It affects both regional and global economies, not merely national ones, as a result of its relatively high total system capital cost and comparably high return on investment. (4) The technology which needs to be developed to construct an SPS has international implications in both economic and national security contexts. DEMAND PROJECTIONS Electricity now constitutes 11% of the global end use of energy, ranging from 6.5% in developing nations to 12% in western Europe. Global electricity consumption is projected to be 17% by 2030. The current expectation is that coal and nuclear power will be developed to meet this demand growth. It is conceivable that the U.S., the USSR, and China could become self-sufficient in fossil energy production by 2030, but only with high capital expenditures. Europe, Japan and most of the developing nations will need major expansion of nuclear and solar sources to do so. However, should the carbon dioxide and acid rain problems turn out to be major environmental concerns, or should nuclear safety become questionable, the SPS becomes one of the very few remaining options. But even with coal and nuclear, Claverie and Dupas (CNRS, France) have projected a viable mix of SPS and ground-based solar power systems based on the relative costs of power generation and power transmission in various parts of the world. Depending on the basic power plant size (0.5 to 5 GWe), SPS market penetration by 2030 has been estimated at 300 to 2300 GWe. Small sizes are particularly interesting to the developing nations, although “pooling” may be possible and desirable in some areas.
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