MIT D’oh boys

This cannot go by uncommented upon:

“An analysis by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has suggested that increasing demand for PV technologies mean that the production of input materials would need to be accelerated at a rate never before seen in the metals industry.”

Standard silicon PV requires silicon (from sand) and silver (mined in abundance) – no problems of supply there. Whereas all the other dopey thin film PV technologies use exotic metals like cadmium, indium, telluride etc.

The researchers found that:

“To meet even relatively small percentages of electricity demand by the year 2030, these thin-film PV technologies would require historically unprecedented [metals production] growth rates because In mining, CIGS and cadmium telluride are considered by-product metals, not mined for their own sake, but only accessible as byproducts of the mining processes for other metals, such as copper. Upping their production, therefore, is a cost-intensive process. “It is quite possible that the cost and availability of these critical elements will constrain deployment of otherwise game-changing technologies.”

D’oh.

They should have gone one step further and realised that in 2030 silicon PV will still dominate. But then that would have put into question all their dopey research into alternative PV technologies.