Försörjningskedjan som löser energifrågan har satt fart

Trots rekordvinster för fossilindustrin 2022 är branschen döende. Anledningen är den fria energin som växer explosionsartat och priserna faller fritt. Tillväxttakten för solcellsanläggningar når i år sin högsta nivå på ett decennium, och med mycket högre volymnivåer.

Solar polysilicon — the semiconductor from which photovoltaic panels are made — is growing even faster. Existing and planned manufacturing capacity will amount to about 2.5 million metric tons by 2025, according to research last week from BloombergNEF’s Yali Jiang. That’s sufficient to build 940 gigawatts of panels every year.

Numbers on that scale are hard to comprehend. The solar boom of the past two decades has left the world with a cumulative 971GW of panels. The polysilicon sector is now betting on hitting something like that level of installations every year. Generating electricity 20% of the time (a fairly typical figure for solar), 940GW of connected panels would be sufficient to supply about 5.8% of the world’s current electricity demand, and then another 5.8% next year, and the next. That would be equivalent to adding the generation of the world’s entire fleet of 438 nuclear power plants — every 20 months.

Bloomberg: The Supply Chain to Beat Climate Change Is Already Being Built