Jeff Bezos heads up one of the world’s biggest online retailers, delivering products to customers spread across hundreds of countries worldwide. But in an interview this week, he spoke about some extra terrestrial ambitions which should change the shape of shopping in years to come, according to the Telegraph.

Addressing an audience at the Code conference in the US, Bezos said that one of the biggest issues facing humanity was that of energy, or rather the lack of its availability on the Earth’s surface. And so he argues that within the next two or three hundred years, it will be necessary to shift major industries outside of the atmosphere to harness the true power of the sun.

Describing this as an effectively unlimited energy source, he said that off-planet facilities will allow enormous factories to be sustained and operated around the clock, manufacturing the products which will eventually be sold via safe shopping online back on Earth.

Bezos differentiates himself from other billionaire entrepreneurs who are planning big things for space, since while he believes getting to Mars is an important and achievable goal, the real commercial benefits will be available by building factories in space itself.

Without these changes, he claims that life on Earth will become increasingly difficult, perhaps resulting in the need to place restrictions on population growth.

Sharing the planet with all of the industries and factories that are required to produce the items people purchase online is not tenable in the long term, Bezos argues. So protecting the environment, by shifting such facilities outside of the atmosphere while still having access to the resources they create, will be the best way to ensure the long term success of the human race in this century and beyond.