Orbital debris could block all these benefits for centuries and prevent us from developing clean energy sources like space solarpower satellites, exploring our SolarSystem and someday making humanity a multi-planetary civilization capable of surviving true climatic catastrophes.
From news that Germany met half the country's energy needs with solarpower to an Egyptian teenager who built a new quantum space propulsion system, 2012 was a big year for clean tech.
Fraunhofer also will design a system to allow the solarenergy equipment to check itself for proper installation and to send its power generation data to the local utility.