[RightWhale]

Here's the plan:

Instead of doing the blatently obvious and beaming power down to the ground so we can recharge our Makitas, we will do something just slightly non-obvious.

We will use the power in space.

The heavy industry use of power will be removed from the power grid. It is about 1/3 of the power use. Heavy industry will be moved into outer space. No more pollution, no more acid runoff from strip mines, it's an environmentalist's dream and he'll have to go to school to learn about something else to whine about.

[Vince Ferrer]

Using the power in space is a good idea, but most of the products would still be designed to be used on earth, which doesn't get around the transportation problem. A space elevator would be necessary for this to work.

Here's an idea that might work:

Take a load of Nitrogen-14 into space, and let radiation from the sun hit it, turning it into carbon-14, a radioactive isotope. This is what happens naturally in the atmosphere, we would just be doing it in a much more concentrated bundle. Take the Carbon-14 down to Earth, and make a nuclear battery out of the material. The battery would have a half life of 5700 years.