Switching To 100% Solar Power Is Impossible—There’s Not Enough Silver On Planet Earth
The debate over carbon emissions and the switch to “green energy” is usually fought over whether or not green energy is the best way to help the environment, or whether it is a cost-effective way of doing so.
Never, it seems, do people consider whether or not making the switch to green energy, particularly solar energy, is actually feasible.
As it turns out—absent a black swan event that turns solar technology on its head—there is not enough silver on planet earth to build enough solar panels to power the world.
You heard that right.
A 100% solar-powered future is impossible, given earth’s resource constrictions.
This holds true even if the efficiency of solar panels quadruples.
Let’s look at the numbers.
Modern solar panels are about 20% efficient. This just means that 20% of the energy in solar radiation is converted into electricity, while the rest is lost as heat.
Even though this is actually quite decent, we would nevertheless need to completely cover an area the size of Spain in solar panels to generate enough electricity to meet global energy demands by 2030.
This is clearly an enormous waste of land—it would be better to preserve that land, and instead switch to nuclear power, or stick with fossil fuels.
But that’s besides the point.
Even if we wanted to cover that much land with solar panels, we couldn’t.
Why?
There’s simply not enough silver to do it.
Let’s run through the numbers.
Silver is a critical element in solar panels. In fact, roughly 20 grams of the stuff goes into an average solar panel, which is 1.8 square meters.
Given that there are 1 million square meters in a square kilometer, this means that we would need 11.1 million grams, or 11.1 tons, of silver per square kilometer of solar panels.
Spain is 506,000 square kilometers in area—which is how much area we’d need to cover in solar panels.
This means that 5,616,600 tons of silver would be required to build enough solar panels to power the world.
That’s way more silver (7.2 times more) than we have—or that exists.
Right now, humans only have only mined, and have access to a total of 777,275 tons of silver—this isn’t even close to enough silver to build enough solar panels.
In fact, even if we mined all of the silver on earth’s crust, there still wouldn’t be enough to make the transition to 100% solar power—even if solar panels became four-times as efficient we still couldn’t do it.
Solar power may be useful to augment conventional power sources, but it can never replace them. Period.
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7 Comments on "A 100% Solar-Powered Future Is Impossible—Requires 7.2 Times More Silver Than Currently Exists"
I’ve never understood the desire for solar power.
The requirements of a power grid are that a
1) there’s a large amount of energy available
2) that energy production can be scaled up or down according to demand
3) the energy production doesn’t fluctuate much and
4) that it’s cheap (since all other industries depend upon it).
Solar power fails on literally all 4 criteria. Let’s think of something better already.
I have an idea. How about clean coal, natural gas, or nuclear?
1) In light of this article, there’s not.
There’s not enough mineral resources to build the solar cells to generate even 1/7th of the earth’s energy needs. Unless a major technological breakthrough happens, solar is a dead end: and maybe the technology will be there, but it’s nonsensical to base policy on something that may or may not happen.
2) That’s not at all cost-effective. Solar cells operate at a reasonably decent capacity only half the time (due to night), therefore we’d either need:
a) Enough non-solar generating capacity to power the entire grid independently, which adds in a massive redundancy & basically doubles power costs.
b) Or we’d need to build a massive amount of extra capacity & store it. Again, this massive redundancy would cost a retarded amount. You’d need to generate at least double the amount to account for night & cloudy days etc. That’s a fuckload of resources that could be better used elsewhere in the economy.
3) What the fuck desert? Are you a retard? Most of the Western world is in northern latitudes & in cloudy/rainy climates. So that’s not an option.
And if we built massive power plants in the Sahara or wherever, you’ve now just given power over the entire electrical grid to 3rd world dictators. Basically, you’re re-creating another OPEC, but this time for our electricity market.
Also, sending energy that distance is so inefficient you’d have to generate 10x the capacity just to get it to Europe. That’s why power is always generated locally: the power loss over transmission wires is high.
Without superconductors (again banking on something that doesn’t exist), this whole plan is fucked. Not only that, you’re putting the West at risk of energy dependence on foreign enemies.
4) No. Solar energy only seems “cheap” because of massive government subsidies.
Coal costs 2.5c/kwh
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20090930/25-cents-kilowatt-hour-americas-cheapest-cleanest-fuel-holds-steady
Solar (at best) costs 5c/kwh with subsidies (and this coming from a clearly partisan source).
https://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/30/average-utility-scale-solar-price-in-u-s-falls-to-5%C2%A2kwh/
Without subsidies the cost is estimated at between 11-30c/kwh
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/302900-solar-energy-cant-survive-without-massive-subsidies
Solar can never compete with fossil fuels because fossil fuels already concentrated millions of years of solar energy into oil & coal. It’s impossible for it to not be as efficient, for the same reason coal will ALWAYS be more efficient than burning trees.
Always glad to see some good discussion. Some good points have been made by both of you.
One point worth mentioning: the solar industry has received hundreds of billions of dollars in government funding for R&D, which has allowed the technology to develop quite rapidly.
Given the massive subsidies & continued funding, it’s likely that said technology will continue to get better.
My problem here is the opportunity cost: what would’ve happened if we had spend those same hundreds of billions, and dedicated the same legions of scientists & engineers on proven technologies, like increasing the efficiency of fossil fuel & nuclear plants?
I think it’s safe to assume we’d have seen similarly disruptive technologies that could’ve made our existing energy infrastructure dirt cheap, clean, & efficient. We won’t know, because we spent the money chasing the sun.
Or better yet: what if we had spent all that money building nuclear & hydroelectric plants? The resources are there & the technology was already proven.
Had we done this, America’s power grid could’ve been emission-free 20 years ago, and it would’ve cost a lot less than waiting until solar energy was viable.
Furthermore, power would’ve been so cheap that it’s questionable whether offshoring would’ve occurred—America would likely still have its manufacturing base, and the middle class that goes with it.
My point: it took 30 years of investment, and hundreds of billions to make solar energy (almost) viable.
It would’ve taken a whole lot less time and money to simply improve the stuff we already had.
Silver is only one of rare essential elements required for solar cells – and the Chinese have an almost monopoly on these other rare earth elements.
Besides such devices have a lifespan just like everything else – there isn’t enough raw essential materials for solar to ever power the world – Solar thermal is a better bet but has the less than half day problem.
Thorium may be the best nuclear possibility – it would be today except you can’t make nuclear weapons from Thorium reactors which is why Uranium got the “nod”.
I forgot electricity is only a fraction of the energy demand!
Show me the freight ships, aircraft, combine harvesters, tractors, semi-trailers etc etc that run on electricity.
Wind and solar generate less than 1% of todays electricity demand and the fraction of TOTAL energy demand is insignificant.
They both suck !