Architect Alex Michaelis has a bold plan to create 50,000 Energy Islands that harness the energy found in the tropics to help feed, fuel and water the world. These Energy Islands use the temperature differential of sea water, wave energy and solar energy to create energy, and sunlight and distilled water to create food on floating islands in tropical areas. I'm not so sure that this is a silver bullet solution, but this would be a great step in the right direction especially when combined with a drastic reduction in consumption. Although this goes against the principal of locally generated resources, it does harness the areas of the world with highest level of production available. Here's an excerpt from the article.
Each island would be built on a floating platform and at its centre
would be a plant that converts heat from the tropical sea into
electricity and drinking water. Below deck would be marine turbines to
harness energy from underwater currents and around the edge floating
devices to provide wave power.
Vegetable farms and homes for
workers will complete the colony and the power will be piped back to be
used on the nearest populated land mass.
Michaelis, who is
working together with his father Dominic, an engineer, estimates that
each island complex could produce 250MW. It would take more than 50,000
installations to satisfy current world demand for energy, but Michaelis
senior believes it is not impossible. "If we consider that we are at
war to find a new form of clean energy, wartime effort in world war two
produced vast numbers of planes, tanks, ships and other armaments on
both warring sides," he said. "20,300 Spitfires alone were built,
making the construction of more than 50,000 of these plants seem a
reasonable number."
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