Shimizu, a forward-thinking Japanese construction company, boldy plans to build a ring of solar panels around the equator of earth’s moon.

The project LUNA RING will build and maintain an array of photovoltaic panels spanning the circumference of the moon. The harvested energy would then be beamed back to earth using high-powered microwaves or lasers.

According to The Futurist’s, the moon’s surface continuously receives 13,000 terawatts of solar power, or about “650 times the amount of power the entire human population would need to continue to grow economically.” What’s more, “Solar collection on the lunar surface would be 10 times more efficient than it is on Earth, where our ozone and rich atmosphere make solar collection less efficient.”

“A project of such size and scope would require the willingness of hundreds of millions of souls to re-embrace government-funded space programs,” writes The Futurist. “It would require sacrifice in the form of higher taxes, cuts in other areas, or both. At present, this seems beyond the capacity of the developed world.” Finding funding for such an astronomically bold idea would be next to impossible, but as the article points out, “we said the same thing about reaching the Moon.”