Will it make sense? One of the first things coming to mind is that if we harvest energy outside of Earth and send it towards Earth, the planet will eventually n

Will it make sense? One of the first things coming to mind is that if we harvest energy outside of Earth and send it towards Earth, the planet will eventually need to dissipate extra energy as heat back to space. Given that we're currently fighting with raising temperatures, it could be a matter of concern given enough scale. Solar system in space enjoy potentially 24 hours per day of sun - so they can be more effective than land-based systems. Downsides of course are the necessity to build in space, to deliver payloads to space. We need good numbers to determine. Hope we'll soon make solar panels in space - maybe on the Moon - so won't need to use Earth resources for that. But "soon" here is of course relative. We can surely use orbital power for space-related needs - running data centers in space could be one of the interesting applications. Space manufacturing, making fuels and metals... Sending energy to Earth usually has more efficiency the longer the sent waves are - microwaves are better to catch than light - but we also have the requirements of rectennas. It's definitely interesting application area from the engineering point of view.