Where to put solar panels without destroying habitat: space

Thank the heavens for the pace of innovation. Just yesterday I was lamenting the beautiful places and vast lands that will be scraped barren to make room for vast arrays of solar panels, and already today someone has a better idea:
It sounds like something out of the latest Star Trek movie, but Solaren already has a contract with California energy giant Pacific Gas & Electric and aims to start delivering by 2016. The theory goes that space-based solar panels will be bathed in constant, fierce sunshine, unaffected by the clouds, smog and storms that would normally weaken the sunlight reaching the surface by about 10 times.
In fact, covering a 1km wide band around the equator with orbiting solar panels could generate more energy in a single year than we have left in all the known oil reserves on Earth.
via BBC.
The story originated with the Los Angeles Times but BBC’s version is a tad more coherent. Among the advantages of this scheme, there is no night time in space and there is no hazard to anyone who flies through the earthward beam of radio waves that Solaren will use to send the energy home. The radio waves will be captured at a Fresno receiving station (finally, a use for Fresno!) and transformed into electricity. Sounds very fancy but it’s apparently viable (the National Space Society has more on that), although Solaren is keeping its exact processes a secret. According to the Times, the project would require four or five rocket launches to send the equipment spaceward.