You are right of course, and I am going by other people’s analysis so I am not sure how much they are correct or wrong this time around. I do not think we will have hugely rising commodity prices making green energy unfeasible, unless there is a war (or just a trade war) blocking the supply of a key input.
Nevertheless, the extrapolation of decreasing costs for solar and wind based on current trends will eventually hit some “hard” limit, and metals are a likely candidate. After all, as manufacturing costs for panels reduce, the fraction of cost coming from raw materials grows even at constant prices. And to get prices going down 10x, we need to supply several times more energy than now (maybe 5x?) meaning growing wind and solar by two orders of magnitude in 20 years. This could plausibly put strain on the supply of raw materials.
Of course, if the bottleneck will turn out to be energy distribution and storage, then we could get prices going down 10x at the source (what Daniel is interested in) but not for household consumption, and only a modest increase in demand.
You are right of course, and I am going by other people’s analysis so I am not sure how much they are correct or wrong this time around. I do not think we will have hugely rising commodity prices making green energy unfeasible, unless there is a war (or just a trade war) blocking the supply of a key input.
Nevertheless, the extrapolation of decreasing costs for solar and wind based on current trends will eventually hit some “hard” limit, and metals are a likely candidate. After all, as manufacturing costs for panels reduce, the fraction of cost coming from raw materials grows even at constant prices. And to get prices going down 10x, we need to supply several times more energy than now (maybe 5x?) meaning growing wind and solar by two orders of magnitude in 20 years. This could plausibly put strain on the supply of raw materials.
Of course, if the bottleneck will turn out to be energy distribution and storage, then we could get prices going down 10x at the source (what Daniel is interested in) but not for household consumption, and only a modest increase in demand.