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Shimizu (the company in this article) isn't the first to come up with this idea it'd be a fantastic although extremely unlikely in our lifetimes demonstration of technology...but since the technology to do this doesn't even exist yet...its just a big fancy dream full of robots in space.

The article itself said the technology to do that didn't exist yet. We're talking about building thousands of miles of solar panels, shipping them to space, hooking them all up to some sort of giant electrical array that powers a giant microwave/laser cannon and shoots a beam at earth...that is somehow not going to do massive amounts of damage and is going to magically shoot at the same spot on the earth 24/7 despite the fact that ya know...orbits and rotation wouldn't make that possible, and then the laser and or microwave beam is going to hit some sort of device that turns it back into electricity...or uses it to generate heat to power some sort of giant steam turbine....to generate electricity.
and ya know how solar panels degrade over time due to exposure to the sun...what do you think would happen to them on the moon when their hit by little micro-asteroids 24/7 and incredible amounts of radiation due to the whole moon not having an atmosphere issue. Oh and they'll be operating in the sub-zero vacuum of space.

This isn't the same as just shooting a satellite into space. It requires far more technology than sending pictures to each other with our iphones. Not to mention can you imagine the cost and amount of resources this would take? They claim they will use robots that will be sent to the moon and will replicate and build the necessary structures out of the moon itself...cuz that doesn't sound like a bad idea.

I think it could be done..some day after technology has caught up to their lofty dreams. Then at the tune of some trillions of dollars maybe it'd get a shot at becoming a reality.

I'd say biogas, solar (on homes not in space), wind, and hydro electrical, are far more plausible and cost effective. I mean the WHO (world health organization) just admitted that cell phones emit microwave radiation and cause cancer...what do you think will happen if they are firing a giant concentrated beam of microwaves at the earth from the moon? Pretty sure microwaves cause molecules to vibrate and the friction and vibration causes heat to build up...so stick a balloon full of air into a microwave and set it on high for a few minutes...what happens the balloon pops because of the increased pressure inside of it caused by expanding gases. What will happen to our atmosphere? If they use a laser instead of a microwave beam we're talking something far beyond the current rating system that goes up to class 4, class 4 can burn skin, ignite combustible materials, and cause permanent devastating eye damage. We're talking about something that would be at least 100's of times more powerful than the current strongest lasers which at 1 megajoule takes 192 individual beams to make that sort of power is currently being used to do research involving cold fusion and defense research outside of San Francisco. A laser that is capable of almost instantaneously igniting anything that it's fired at...mounted on the moon...somehow sounds a little too doomsday devicey to me. I mean seriously company's can't even protect our credit cards, our governments can't stop hackers from accessing top secret information, google and yahoo can't stop spam...how the hell are they going to stop someone from hacking into this thing and killing billions? Can you imagine just one accident with this thing? They'll instantly panic and shut it down just like their starting to do with nuclear power plants because of japan's current problems.

Using lasers in controlled environments for hydrogen fusion is much more feasible.

I don't blame you if you don't read this whole thing because it is quite the wall of text. Just don't make your next post about how the only reason it can't be done is because the government is suppressing the technology to make it possible.