We don't have enough production of basic materials like steel to scale solar and (especially) wind to cover our entire energy needs, regardless of energy storage. Fission and fusion will become inevitable in a decade or two.
We don't have enough production of basic materials like steel to scale solar and (especially) wind to cover our entire energy needs, regardless of energy storage. Fission and fusion will become inevitable in a decade or two.
Why do we have to make solar panel infrastructure (grilles, consoles etc.) from steel? I'm sure more common materials can be used.
I don’t know if the statement you are replying to is correct “we don’t have enough steel” but what I can say is steel (well, iron) is about the most common material on earth. I’m surprised to see that aluminum is slightly more abundant, but they are similar.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_crust
However this chart shows that iron represents more than 94% of all metals mined. That is, iron (used to make steel) is the most commonly mined metal by far. So actually more common materials can’t be used as no more common metal exists.
Earth is almost entirely iron, but Aluminum floats in iron so it ends up being a large amount of the crust. But yeah, if we're ever like "gee we don't have enough iron" then we've far surpassed all other possible natural resource limits of the planet.
The current production of 1.9 billion tons of steel per year is something you consider insufficient?
I don't know how much steel we need per square meter of PV (e.g. frames can be made from wood), but I do know the area we need for the current global electrical demand of 2 TW even after accounting for capacity factor and not just cell efficiency, and that our current production in each year is sufficient to put a contiguous 2 mm layer behind all of it:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281.9e9%20tons%20%2F%2...
Given the panels are supposed to last 25 years, even at steady-state replacement rates, and assuming zero growth in the steel sector, and assuming none of that steel gets recycled when the cells themselves need refurbishment or replacement, that doesn't seem to be a real problem to me.