re: Japan is on a mission to beam solar power from space by 2025

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What happens when microwaves hit polarized molecules, like say water in the air?

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We have a green project that literally boils the atmosphere!!!

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I always thought the water in the atmosphere was vapor, how do you boil vapor?

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So very many of these modern energy projects are just government money grifts that don't pass the slightest sniff test.

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Absolutely true. But this project is probably an attempt to address a couple of issues with solar. With a satellite, you can maximize your solar collection time, eliminate the effect of atmosphere, dirt, and debris (like bird poop), and you eliminate the issue of taking up surface area for a solar farm. That all has some merit but may be offset by the losses in transmission. In short, there are reasons to consider this but I think it is ultimately still a non-starter.

On a side note, a very similar idea was postulated by Isaac Asimov in the novel "The Gods Themselves" but the collection site was on the moon and he also stated there were concerns about the health effects on people who lived near the dish sites where the microwaves were beamed back to earth as the delivery method for the energy.