Harnessing the sun’s power is nothing new on Earth, but if a Japanese company has it’s way it will build a solar strip across the 11,000 mile Lunar equator that could supply our world with clean and unlimited solar energy for generations.

The Shimizu Corporation has set it’s sights high, 238,900 miles to be exact. Their plan is to build a sustainable source of renewable energy on the Moon’s surface.

In order to do this they will beam microwave and laser energy to giant energy conversion facilities on Earth. These beams will travel to semiconductors and inverters which will convert that energy to clean electricity to the grid that will power households, businesses and factories.

Shimizu’s plan uses Earthly materials, ceramics, water, glass, concrete, oxygen and solar cells. They would not ship water from Earth, they will make user of the Moon’s own resources and reduce the lunar soil using hydrogen shipped from our planet and then extract the water for use in construction.

The largest solar farm on American soil is 90,000 acres or around 140 miles. Shimizu is proposing a strip of solar cells 11,000 miles long. The great wall of China stretches a massive 13,170 miles. The distance around the Earth from pole to pole is roughly 25,000 miles, this would be a very impressive construction project on Earth, let alone our celestial neighbor.

The construction of the luna ring would more than likely take place in multiple phases, possibly through 2 generations. The first step is to set up an infrastructure to get the materials needed for the project into space which would include a space port that could robotically build ships in low Earth orbit.

These ships would then get supplies from Earth and transfer them to the lunar surface where a team of robots and astronauts working in tandem would start assembling the massive power stations and solar cells that would carry power across the lunar surface using massive electric power cables.