Keeping pace with PV growth

Every new terawatt of PV has a physical footprint. It requires tons of silicon and glass, kilometers of copper cable, and much smaller - but potentially more critical - quantities of silver, indium and tin. Those material flows have become enormous as global PV capacity has tripled from 1 TW in 2022 to today's 3 TW and continues to move toward several tens of terawatts. How enormous depends on where solar deployment eventually ends up. Scenarios examined in a new IEA-PVPS analysis range from 29 TW to 75 TW of silicon-based PV by 2050, with 29 TW and 63 TW representing the study's main low- and ...

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