Building a Clean Energy Superpower and driving economic growth with the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy

The UK’s Industrial Strategy sets out a bold ambition; build a Clean Energy Superpower by unlocking innovation, energy security, and net zero growth. As energy demand soars, and it becomes ever clearer how central energy is to competitive advantage and quality of life,  the country needs solutions that go beyond incremental improvements. We must harness technologies that can deliver abundant, affordable, and reliable clean electricity at scale — critical foundations for industrial productivity, the benefits of an AI enabled future, and economic resilience. At Space Solar, we’re delivering space-based solar power, leveraging the abundant solar energy in space to power markets on earth, and designed to support this national mission.

The Challenge

If the UK is to achieve its goal to “increase our energy security and reduce electricity bills by investing in clean energy”, then Intermittent Renewables alone can’t deliver what’s needed. The current renewable energy landscape faces three critical challenges: weather dependency, grid infrastructure limitations, and the very high cost of making the whole energy system reliable with a high percentage of intermittent renewables.   Already the UK has the highest energy costs in the world, throttling the prospects for economic growth.

Other technologies such as long duration energy storage, carbon capture and hydrogen remain expensive and immature with no certainty that these can be commercialised and scaled.  Small modular nuclear reactors are again being pursued but the economics and scalability remain challenging, and they are at least a decade from the first systems becoming operational.   There is great uncertainty in the pathways to a clean energy future for the UK offering energy security and low energy costs for consumers.

That’s why we’re pioneering Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP) — 24/7, 365 days of the year, all-weather clean power — offering a highly capable solution to drive down costs, electrify industries, and strengthen the country’s energy and economic security.

Can Space play a role in UK Energy Security?

SBSP presents a paradigm shift in how we think about renewable energy; unlike terrestrial renewables, SBSP operates in space, where sunlight is 40% more intense than even the hottest rays of the sun in the desert, and most importantly, continuously available. Just a single commercial SBSP satellite could deliver a Gigawatt of baseload, dispatchable power, with the potential to scale rapidly to meet the UK’s growing electricity demand.   Independent studies confirm that SBSP can reduce energy costs dramatically, and with its strong market appeal and scalability, SBSP has the potential to become a dominant source of electricity generation for the world – a trillion dollar market – within the next twenty years.

Without the limitations of terrestrial weather dependencies — terrestrial solar on average uses just 10% of its capacity — our system could deliver 13 times more energy from a single square metre of photovoltaics in space, compared to the same square metre here on Earth. With a pilot plant in five years we can scale rapidly from then, with a 50% lower carbon footprint compared to terrestrial-based solar.

As a baseload, all-weather clean energy source, SBSP is a forward-looking solution designed to complement existing renewables. Being dispatchable (tuneable) SBSP can help balance the grid and bring these ‘clean energy superpowers’ together to realise the UK’s ambitions to reduce our “reliance on fossil fuel imports” and make the UK “more resilient to disruption and price volatility on international markets” — whilst avoiding costly grid delays, reducing costs for businesses and households, and attracting further investment.

Recent studies have shown that every 2GW of SBSP installed into the UK energy system can save over £1Bn each year in energy system costs, through reducing overbuilding of intermittent renewables, overcoming grid bottlenecks and with instantaneous export through the ability to switch the beam instantaneously to points of demand anywhere across the Earth’s surface.  This can enable the UK to again become an energy exporter by looking to the stars.

With the expensive asset in space and relatively low cost rectennas on the ground, SBSP can have a major role in democratising energy access.  While some technologies such as nuclear will have an important role in the UK moving toward clean energy, it is unlikely that these technologies will be rolled out in developing nations.  With their energy growth projections, if there is not a scalable clean energy solution that works for them, our own efforts to strive towards Net Zero will be for naught, given this must be a global endeavour.  Space Solar alone will be scaling to deliver tens of GWs per year, supporting a just transition and enabling UK export.

Leveraging our domestic strengths

The Strategy highlights that “countries that leverage their natural strengths, technological edge, and skilled workforce will seize the economic prize of the net zero transition.” The UK is well-placed to do this, since “our net zero economy is already making a significant contribution to growth in the UK, rising by 10.1% since 2023, three times faster than the overall UK economy.”

Space Solar’s patented CASSIOPeiA solar system and wireless power beaming technologies have been designed with these goals in mind. Composed of thousands of small, repeatable modules, our systems are designed, built and manufactured using the UK’s existing strengths in semiconductors, satellite technology and advanced manufacturing.

Our hyper modular system is agile and can be delivered at speed as it is ultimately about components like mobile phone electronics produced at scale — an approach that the strategy rightly states is key to reaching our net zero ambitions. We’re expecting to deliver a pilot plant by 2030, a mere 5 years away. By doing so, we can deliver commercial SBSP to a range of energy markets from grid solutions to off-grid applications like data centres, mining and maritime, whilst unlocking 143,000 job-years of high value, green employment across the country from the development programme alone, and creation of future industries in wireless power transmission and in-space robotic assembly.

From a shorter term outlook, the applications of our wireless power transmission technology are vast, offering an alternative in certain places to the miles of transmission cables covering our countryside — and a solution to the country’s grid constraints and connection queues, in preparation for a soon-to-be fully operational SBSP system.

With countries across the world working to solve their energy security challenges, the UK’s early leadership in SBSP technology can position us as leading international development partners and exporters of complete systems, components, expertise, and ultimately power — creating a new, global, high-tech manufacturing and energy export industry worth billions of dollars.

Becoming a scientific and innovation superpower

By developing these systems here in the UK, we can leverage existing UK strengths while creating new capabilities: we will not only provide constant, scalable, and plentiful clean power, but also create new jobs, attract private investment, and unlock cross-sector opportunities. So, in a world where energy security equals economic security and increasingly overall security in an AI enabled world, SBSP offers the UK a unique opportunity to lead the global transition to clean, abundant energy, while securing our industrial future.

The development of SBSP is an engineering programme, not one of fundamental science.  The spillover benefits are huge.  In times of rapid change and uncertainty, rule number one in any strategic playbook is to give yourself options.  Having SBSP as an option for the UK and partners that can scale from five years’ time, is an incredible option.  It is a no regrets move with the adjacent opportunities it creates, opens up a leadership role in energy and space and positions us for a bright future.

Nuclear fusion may at some point be realised but today it remains a science project with major breakthroughs required to realise even a pilot plant, and there are huge uncertainties around its commercialisation, economics and scalability.  With this backdrop, investing now to enable a future that includes SBSP is an option with its downside risk covered and with huge upside.  The cost of that option toward a pilot plant is a small percentage of the UK’s investment in fusion.

Whilst the hype cycle for fusion is ahead, SBSP is catching up with $100M of private investment into SBSP companies.  Investors increasingly have conviction on SBSP and large space infrastructure and also seeing the strong adjacent opportunities.  The UK is, and with strong direction can continue to be, a leader and has the chance to create a carbon-zero future of abundance and possibility, powered from space.

We’re not just developing a new energy technology — we’re paving the way for the UK to become a global Clean Energy Superpower.