The mineral demands for a solar power expansion By EPN Staff While the prospect of powering millions of homes using energy from the sun continues to draw attention, the details are far more complex. A massive solar power expansion will require an equally massive mining expansion, as the minerals necessary to build millions of new solar panels remain deep underground. The U.S. and the world have set ambitious goals for expanded use of solar power in the coming decade. In 2023, solar investment dollars surpassed oil investment globally, for the first time ever. Why it matters Constructing a single solar panel is a global undertaking, with minerals mined all over the world and typically shipped to China for production. Quartz is frequently mined in North Carolina, which produces roughly 80% of the mineral necessary for the solar process. The quartz is then shipped to China. Chinese power plants convert the quartz to polysilicon, using coal-powered power plants, hydrogen gas and sulfuric acid to produce nearly all of the world’s solar wafers. Silver, mined primarily in Mexico, China, Peru, Chile, Australia, Russia and Poland, is woven into the wafers to facilitate conduction (14% of all silver mined in 2023 went to solar panels). Last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected solar power would be the fastest-growing resource in the U.S., increasing by 75%, from 163 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2023 to 286 billion kWh in 2025. Increasing production so dramatically in just two years will require significantly increasing the materials extracted and processed all over the globe. The bigger picture The International Energy Agency’s “Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario” depends heavily on ramped up solar, but this would require majorly increasing the extraction of minerals needed for panel production. As of 2021, the solar industry accounted for 11% of all silver production, 6% of metallurgical-grade silicon and 40% of all refined tellurium, the IEA reported. The agency estimated that the industry would have to increase production of these key minerals anywhere from 150% to 400% by 2030 in order to hit its own goals. To hit these targets, new mines must be quickly constructed; but new mines typically take more than 16 years to become operational, according to the IEA. “Initiating faster and larger growth exposes the supply chain to the risks of material unavailability and industry capacity insufficiency,” a 2023 report stated. “Project lead times present one critical risk, as mines and production facilities can be built only so quickly.” Deeper context Even if the industry was able to procure the materials necessary to hit IEA’s goals, a global supply chain reliant on adversarial nations introduces uncertainty into the carbon footprint projections of solar panel production. Some scientists have cautioned that the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) are using overly optimistic models, despite having no data from China. China’s heavy involvement in the solar industry has caused outlets like The Economist to ask, “Is China a climate saint or villain?” Similarly, IEA proclaimed in 2024 that we are entering the new “Age of Electricity,” while simultaneously detailing the nearly impossible mineral extraction process necessary to get there.
