Continued rapid growth in PV deployment could require significant growth in the supply of some metals. In thispaper, we estimate the growth rates needed in metals production to match PV deployment projections in 2030 for arange of future energy scenarios. We expect that the paper will contribute insight and methods that will be useful forevaluating the scalability of a range of PV and other technologies. Novel features of the paper include (1) the focuson possible constraints to the rate of scaling up metals production for PV, and (2) the use of an ensemble dataset ofpast growth rates in the production of a large set of metals to study this issue. More generally, the approachdeveloped in this paper may be useful for assessing the scalability of a wide range of energy technologies to informtechnology development in the laboratory and public and private research investment.
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