Tesla CEO Elon Musk underscored the potential of solar energy by examining what it could do for human life. The billionaire reiterated an idea he shared already in June 2022.

What happened: The amount of solar energy being received by Earth would be enough to power a civilization 100 times the size of ours, Musk said, while quoting a tweet from one of his followers tagged with the Twitter handle @ Rainmaker1973 left.

@Rainmaker1973’s tweet said that the world’s current electricity needs could be met by covering 1.2% of the Sahara with solar panels, attributing the deduction to a theoretical calculation. He shared links to two messages that explained the potential of solar energy.

A 2017 story published by Power Technology, titled “The Sahara: a solar battery for Europe,” described a small British company called TuNur applying to the Tunisian government to start building a 4.5 gigawatt project for promoted concentrated solar power in the Sahara. If successful, the energy produced could be transported via underground cables to provide Europe with a new zero-carbon, alternative baseload energy, the article said.

A recent Forbes story pointed out that TuNur and Elmed (a proposed 600MW underwater high-voltage DC interconnector) in Tunisia are trying to deliver clean electricity to Europe via Italy. TuNur’s final investment decision is due in 2024, it added.

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How the math works: The second link shared by @Rainmaker1973 led to a 2016 Forbes story that included a response from a Berkeley professor Mehran Moalem to a question on Quora. The professor said that global energy consumption, including renewable and non-renewable sources, was 13,000 million tonnes of oil equivalent or MTOE in 2015, equivalent to 17.3 terawatts of continuous power.

If an area of ​​43,000 square miles of the earth were covered with solar panels, it would provide more than 17.4 TW of power. If the Great Sahara, the…