A new analysis suggests that there is a major catch to the world's need for solar panels. The solar panel market is critical for a clean energy future and could demand close to half the world's aluminum by the year 2050. There are ways to mitigate this.
The scarcity of aluminum is not an issue; it is the most abundant metal on Earth. The production of pure aluminum, which is used in solar panel frames, comes with a huge energy cost that could translate to bulk emissions.
According to the International Energy Agency, solar panels are expected to provide a third of the world's total electricity demand by the year 2050. The amount of global electricity that came from solar was just over 2%, but solar is producing the cheapest electricity in history and renewable energy is being installed at a record rate.
A team of photovoltaics researchers, led by Alison Lennon from the University of New South Wales in Australia, explain in their paper that this represents an enormous manufacturing task that will create a demand for a variety of minerals.
Some solar roadmaps predict the world will need 85 times more solar energy than we currently produce to limit global warming to safe levels, although predictions vary and some projections might underestimate how much solar we actually need.
More than 40 percent of the world's current aluminum production will need to be installed with solar panels by the year 2050, according to the researchers. China produced over three-quarters of all the aluminum in 2020.
Lennon and colleagues note that the use of aluminum in other clean energy technologies, such as wind turbine and electric vehicles, "which is also expected to increase, or its continued use for transportation and building infrastructure," is not included in the increase in demand.
How the aluminum is made is what matters. Most of the emissions come from the electricity used to power the production of aluminum.
One of the most recycled materials is aluminum. Almost 75% of the aluminum produced is still being used today. It's great news that recycling aluminum uses a fraction of the energy required to make it again.
Lennon and team write that aluminum can play a critical role in the rapid growth of solar cells' to tera watt levels by 2050, growth that will be required to reduce emissions to net zero.
In the worst case scenario, the emissions intensity of aluminum production remains unchanged and its demand adds close to 4,000 megatonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere.
Estimates of how much recycled aluminum will be available to use in China, the lifetime of solar panel parts, and expected improvements in aluminum production techniques were factored in.
"We're not going to get rid of these emissions unless something is done about the process," engineer Gurn Svarsdttir of the University of Reykjavik said in 2020.
The International Aluminium Institute's upper limit for keeping global heating below 2 degrees is 1,500 megatonnes of CO2 by mid-century in the best-case scenario.
To get there, the researchers say it will be critical to take full advantage of recycled aluminum and to source it from local producers in the countries where solar panels are installed.
We need to pull out all the stops because the climate crisis means we need a lot of solar panels.
The decarbonization of electricity grids that power aluminum smelters must happen in the next decade to keep emissions below 1,000 megatonnes of CO2 by 2050, a task made easier with policies to incentivize low-carbon production and if new facilities are built in renewable energy zones, the researchers conclude
The study was published in a journal.
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