Sustaining the Wind, Part 2: Indium and Beyond...

[NNadir]

Last edited Tue Aug 18, 2015, 08:31 PM - Edit history (1)

This is a rather long work, my own, which was recently published on the Brave New Climate website run by the academic ecologist, Dr. Barry Brook. Some excerpts:

At the conclusion of part 1 of this series, we saw that the putative demand for the element indium in order to build some 15,000,000 wind turbines (at a nominal peak capacity of roughly 900 MW) that would be required to produce annual outputs of 90 exajoules of energy, given the low capacity utilization associated with wind infrastructure, was on the order of 18,000 tons. Although predictions about the total geological supply of any element or mineral are inherently fuzzy, we have also seen that if true, it is quite possible, that the indium demand for wind power alone, never mind the solar industry where it is a key constituent of “CIGS” (copper-indium-gallium-selenide) thin film solar cells, might well exceed the geologically available reserves of the element. In this part we will look at indium as a surrogate for the many critical elements on which modern technology depends. We noted in part 1 that a consideration demand for the elements and minerals required to construct so called “renewable energy” infrastructure is one to two orders of magnitude higher than the demand required to construct nuclear power plants...

...The fact that indium is always found, with the exception of a few very rare minerals, in very dilute solid solutions has implications in both cost as well as in the environmental impact associated with its isolation. As we discussed briefly in Part 1 of this series the chief source of indium in zinc ores, where it’s concentration is generally lower than 100 parts per million. Generally, zinc is refined by “roasting,” heating its sulfide under mildly oxidizing conditions using heat. (It would be safe to assume that in most cases, the source of the primary energy for generating this heat is dangerous fossil fuels: Despite the trillion dollar expenditure in the last decade, discussed in Part 1 of this series, on so called “renewable energy” the growth in absolute terms in the use of dangerous fossil fuels continues unabated, as does the concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the planetary atmosphere. Although a great deal has been published about putative “solar thermal” approaches to obtaining process heat for things like roasting zinc blende[v], the number of commercial solar zinc refining operations on the planet is zero.) Under these conditions, volatile constituents often condense in the exhaust stacks; these are known as “flue dusts.” While the precise procedures for the recovery of indium are generally industrial secrets,[vi] the general approach is understood to involve leaching these dusts with acids to collect indium and other metals, precipitating them with electrolytically obtained hydroxides – indium hydroxides are one of the most insoluble hydroxides known – and refining them electrolytically. This is obviously an energy intensive process...

...It is interesting that this different periodic table, of “threatened elements” for the energy industry- it does rightly include rhenium – doesn’t include element 48, cadmium, even though this toxic element, along with the toxic elements selenium and/or tellurium, has played an important role in the absurdly expensive and poorly producing solar PV industry, a technology alternate to “CIGS.” (In China, which dominates world supplies of cadmium much as it dominates the world supply of lanthanides, up to 70% of the rice crop in markets in Southern China has been shown to have cadmium contamination levels of concern, with 10% of the rice crop having levels of concern for the nation as a whole.[xix] (But don’t worry; be happy; solar PV is “green” energy.)

We might imagine, including cadmium, selenium and tellurium for the solar industry, a periodic table of “threatening elements” which would include several elements widely distributed in the planet’s atmosphere (and ultimately its soil and water supplies) because of the very stupid practice of burning coal and dumping its wastes indiscriminately; this list would include of course, mercury, lead, and carbon, but no matter…

...many of the papers written about the putative shortage of indium concern the solar industry, this, again, in connection with the “CIGS” thin film technology. A paper[xxxv] published by the US NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab) on the long term degradation rate of CIGS solar cells – no, they do not last “forever” – notes at its outset that as of 2008 these were the most “efficient” solar cells available. Now, if you are old enough to have outgrown your pimples and if you have been paying attention to the so called “renewable energy” rhetoric, you have certainly lived through a fairly large share of breathless “solar breakthrough” announcements of reduced cost and higher efficiency, as if this process were to go on indefinitely.[xxxvi] Nevertheless, as of 2015, the solar industry remains a trivial form of energy. In contrast to the dangerous petroleum industry that is or was of such concern to “peak oilers,” if the solar industry were to vanish tomorrow, no one would notice...

...A publication[xxxvii] from the same organization, NREL, which is certainly not unenthusiastic about the so called “renewable energy” industry, since the jobs of everyone working there, depends on it, has this to say on the subject:

For PV to achieve energy significance will require global annual production levels on the order of hundreds of GWs to TWs. If we are to become an industry of such a size, one key-enabling factor will be to avert potentially debilitating increases in the prices for critical feedstock materials. This will require a detailed plan, especially with regards to a timely coordination between the desired level of PV deployment and the corresponding supply of modules. In order to enable manufacturing the PV technologies that have been discussed at the hundreds of GWs to TWs scale, it is apparent that the supply base for the critical elements tellurium, indium and gallium will need to be expanded.

Note the words, written just two years ago by experts in the field after decades of cheering for solar energy “For PV to achieve energy significance…will require 100s of GW to TW…”

A terawatt of energy operating at 100% capacity utilization for one year, a “terawatt-year” is just shy of 32 exajoules, this would be out of the 560 exajoules humanity now consumes each year...

...However the solar industry will never operate at 100% capacity utilization since it is widely reported in various places around the world that the sun appears to go down every day, and sometimes, in some places, it gets cloudy, or it rains, or it even snows. So here we have an insignificant industry, operating at significant costs, producing very little energy and already worried about supply shortages...

...There clearly isn’t enough indium on the planet to make “CIGS” type solar cells a meaningful form of energy, where we define meaningful as being at least at a 10 exajoule per year in scale.[xlvi] Therefore it is useful, probably also wise, to ask the question “Why bother?” when addressing this particular “solar breakthrough.”

...In closing, let’s take a look at yet another of the “critical elements” periodic tables[xlvii], this one which ranks the elements on how easy it is to develop alternate, at least as we understand the case today, approaches to the technologies that employ them should their supplies vanish:



We see that indium, (In) has a score of 60, in this rendering meaning that replacement of it is deemed possible by the authors of the paper from which it is reproduced, although that the replacement material might not function as optimally as indium itself does. Of course, in the case of the wind energy industry, which already has a very low level of performance even with optimal materials, one wonders how many such substitutions the industry could afford without making its marginal performance even worse.

In the periodic table above, one of the elements considered most irreplaceable is the lanthanide element dysprosium, (Dy) which has a score of 100, according to the authors of the paper, thus being irreplaceable. One of the major consumers of dysprosium on the planet is, in fact, the wind industry.

In part 4 of this series, we’ll take a closer look at dysprosium, and speculate, as many have, on what it means to the sustainability of the wind industry...

Brave New Climate: Sustaining the Wind, Part 2: Indium and Beyond...

[hunter]

1. The worst place on earth...

...

And there’s no better place to understand China’s true sacrifice than the shores of Baotou toxic lake. Apparently created by damming a river and flooding what was once farm land, the lake is a “tailings pond”: a dumping ground for waste byproducts. It takes just 20 minutes to reach the lake by car from the centre of the city, passing through abandoned countryside dominated by the industrial architecture on the horizon. Earlier reports claim the lake is guarded by the military, but we see no sign. We pass a shack that was presumably a guard hut at one point but it’s abandoned now; whoever was here left in a hurry, leaving their bedding, cooking stove, and instant noodle packets behind when they did.

...

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth

[NNadir]

4. Quite a number of people have been remarking on Baotou recently. It's pretty tragic.

But don't worry, be happy. Wind power is green.

In putting the subsequent pieces of this series together I learned a great deal about lanthanide geochemistry and lanthanide processing.

The opening photograph (out of a piece in Nature) in Part I of the series was from a Chinese lanthanide processing facility.

In part IV I'll be discussing the Lynas lanthanide facility and its planned ore processing plant in Malaysia, which has faced huge objections - there's a certain irony in this - because of its "radioactive" waste.

Having reviewed the processing schemes for isolating ores, even without separating the individual lanthanides and lanthanoids, (Sc and Y), I'm kind of wondering where the water for Mountain Pass in California is going to come through. Maybe they can ship their ores to Malaysia for processing as well.

Stay tuned...

[kristopher]

2. NNadir is to Science

As Vogon is to Poetry

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112788882#post21

[NNadir]

3. Um...um...um...

I guess this response would be in lieu of remarking on where the indium for the expensive and useless CIGS solar cells will be coming from...

It's rather like the last time you produced this post, a few days ago, in lieu of having anything to say about the 7 million people who die each year from air pollution each year while we wait for the grand two trillion dollar per decade solar and wind industry to produce 5 of the 560 exajoules of energy humanity consumes each year.

I think most people can judge "Sustaining the Wind" on its merits.

Do drop by for Part 5, when we discuss Mark Z. Jacobson, cheerleader for throwing trillions more away with his wonderful plan to stop hurricanes with wind turbines.

[Finishline42]

5. So you project 15 million windmills when there are currently how many?

So you project 15 million windmills when there are currently how many?

I've skimmed your article and did a look on google but have yet to see where indium is used in the manufacture of windmills. Please help me here.

It seems it is used mainly in thin film PV. A technology which I'm not sold on - main advantage of PV is longevity of the panels - no moving parts - loss of less than 1/2% per year on output.

[NNadir]

7. References 28 and 29 in Part I of the series, along with reference 14 in the same part...

...should clarify whence comes the projection of 15 million wind turbines: It comes out of reference 14, where the authors choose to utilize the projection of the WWF, which was 25,000 TWh, roughly 90 exajoules, each year. In writing Part I I back calculated the requirement, based on the Danish Energy Agency's exhaustive database of every damned wind turbine in their country (reference 29) how many turbines would be required to meet this demand.

Even scarier than the indium requirement is the aluminum requirement, which would amount to about 7 years worth of the entire production of this element on the planet. As pointed out in the text of Part I, the entire wind industry on the entire planet does not produce as much electricity as required to refine aluminum.

In general the number of wind turbines that will be built by date such-and-such - which over the last thirty years has remained 30 years into the future - vary widely, as I will discuss in Part V. All of these projections are, in fact, nonsense. The wind industry soaked up nearly a trillion bucks in the last decade - see reference 1 in Part 1 - and isn't growing at a tiny fraction of the rate of dangerous fossil fuels are growing. The wind industry apparently doesn't produce even 2 exajoules of the 560 exajoules humanity consumes each year. The average rate of increase for energy increase for the entire planet seems to be rising at 7 exajoules per year. Thus after nearly half a century of cheering for what wind energy can do, the entire installed infrastructure installed over 40 years, is 2/7 of the annual growth in energy consumption.

I would call this a dramatic failure, but apparently that's just me.

Reference 28 gives a list of all the "critical" elements and the required quantities of them in order to meet the demand of the projections of the EU27 for wind power. Indium is just one of the metals listed there; others include gold, silver, the conflict metal tantalum, etc. Some of these figures are translated into the text of Part I.

People keep focusing on the indium and wiggling and wagging about possible replacements for it, this in order to continue to hear what they want to hear, that wind energy is a useful and practical way to address climate change, which by the way, it has not been, is not, and will not be.

I chose indium randomly, well not exactly randomly, but in light of the fact that it is one of the most endangered elements in the periodic table, it seemed a good choice among many, especially since so many people seem to have i Phones, in which the element remains essential.

I could have chosen tantalum. That element is one of the most tragic in the world, since so much brutality is associated with obtaining it in central Africa.

I meant indium as a surrogate for all the other elements involved that show that so called "renewable energy" is not, in fact, renewable.

Reference 28 did not specify the uses for indium, but from my own research and some comments in the comment section of Brave New Climate source post (Part 2) the indium is a constituent of LIDAR devices, in the detectors, which are a ceramic composite of gallium arsenide and indium antimonide. Other possible uses include in bearings - this was the first major industrial application of indium - and in lead free solder.

The point of part 2 was that even if some, or all of the critical elements could be or are replaced, this will have an impact on the performance of the wind turbines, which is quite clearly miserable already.

Thank you for your questions. Let me know if you have others, although the answers may be found in the text of either or both parts.

[Finishline42]

10. Uses of Indium

I asked about how indium was being used on the production of windmills because they are in essence - a simple machine. You have the blades (made from composites), the hubs, the generator and the tower. And then there are electronics for control of everything about the windmill.

Ok, so I found this on Indium.

Indium is used to coat the bearings of high speed motors since it allows for the even distribution of lubricating oil. Indium is used to dope germanium to make transistors. It is also used to make other electrical components such as rectifiers, thermistors and photoconductors. Indium can be used to make mirrors that are as reflective as silver mirrors but do not tarnish as quickly. Indium is also used to make low melting alloys. An alloy of 24% indium and 76% gallium is a liquid at room temperature.

So from this you have the need for indium for the bearings and in the electronics. Which has me wondering - who uses more indium - the worldwide production of windmills or the 17 million vehicles we produce a year in the US (currently 90 million worldwide)? Windmills or all the electronics in the billions of smartphones that have been made in the last 10 years? TV's or DVD players? Care to make the same projections on what we can't do?

The point about aluminum use is equally without merit. It's one of the most used materials in the world and they expand the use every day. And there's really not that much in a windmill - the tower and the body of the generator.

The entire premise is that based on what we know today and projecting into the future - it won't work. It's like a lot of projections about the future - it's mainly guesswork.

One of the most interesting stat's going right now in my mind is the drop in demand for electricity in the US - lowest since 2009. Any ideas on what's that about?

[NNadir]

12. You are missing the point entirely.

You obviously haven't read very much of the entire argument, I think, and are simply criticizing something you haven't read.

This is, frankly, a head in a sand approach.

Your statement about aluminum, this one: "The point about aluminum use is equally without merit. It's one of the most used materials in the world and they expand the use every day. And there's really not that much in a windmill - the tower and the body of the generator," is a glib hand waving argument that flies in conflict with a published article in a major scientific publication (reference 14 in part one of "Sustaining the Wind." That would be this one:

Nature Geoscience 6, 894–896 (2013)

For the record, I gave a rather detailed account of the chemistry and energy requirements associated with aluminum in the text of part 1. I also referenced, if you look the entire output of planetary aluminum from the World Aluminum Institute, if you look. The arithmetic operations to get an understanding of this issues are exceedingly simple, if one does them.

If one doesn't do them, and simply asserts that they don't matter, one lacks intellectual standing.

Look here. For the first half of the year the planetary atmosphere's content of dangerous carbon dioxide has been above 400 ppm.

The rate of increase hasn't slowed a bit. In fact, it's rising pretty much faster than ever. Clearly whatever it is we think we're doing isn't working.

We are trillions of dollars into the wind industry investment. Try to imagine what a trillion dollars is. It takes 33 years for one billion seconds to pass. Multiply that number by 1000 and see what you get.

We've had nearly half a century of this "wind and solar will save us" experiment and it does essentially nothing, Zero. Zilch.

I am sick and tired of this generation dumping its irresponsibility, its intellectual laziness on future generations. If wind power was so great, the fastest growing form of energy on this planet would not be dangerous fossil fuels.

I don't think you understand even remotely, in the weakest way, the materials flows on this planet, and the limits of these flows. I assure you,. after much research, that the scientific community is nowhere near as glib as you are being.

You're obviously one of those people who thinks that water comes from a faucet and electricity from the wall socket.

As for your remarks on the electricity requirements of the United States: It's provincial. Writing of the blithering fool Amory Lovins, who insisted in a largely unreferenced garbage paper in 1976 that so called renewable energy and conservation would save the world I described this kind of attitude, which is morally bankrupt on a planet where billions of people live on less than $1.25/day, thusly:

Seen from this perspective, Lovins’ writings are all marked by myopic bourgeois provincialism. The huge flaw in his 1976 conceit, and his conceits forever thereafter, was that for him, people living in the United States, and maybe Western Europe, represented the only human life that mattered. Chinese and Indians, for two examples, may as well have not existed if one reads his 1976 fantasy; he blithely assumed that they would agree to remain unimaginably impoverished while Americans pursued hydrogen HYPErcars[5] in every suburban garage and solar heated molten salt tanks[6] in every suburban backyard.

Current World Energy Demand, Ethical World Energy Demand, Depleted Uranium and the Centuries to Come

I hate to inform you that the Chinese and Indians exist - I've met quite a few of them - and they haven't agreed to remain impoverished so some American somewhere can be self satisfied because he bought LED light bulbs. (As it turns out, they have materials and toxicology issues themselves.)

Vast numbers of people in Africa and elsewhere who are living under conditions that most Americans couldn't possibly imagine, and about whom defenders of this awful so called "renewable energy" scam clearly couldn't care less.

Just this month, the current issue of Environmental Science and Technology published ten papers focusing on critical elements. If you don't want to know anything about this issue, if you just want to coast along insisting that "someday scientists will figure it out" = and this = well, I suspect that history will not forgive the set you represent.

Nevertheless, whether you care or not, the term "renewable energy" as utilized in common parlance is an oxymoron.

Go back to sleep. It's too late anyway, and in any case, I'm not sure you're very interested in the world.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

[phantom power]

16. "there's really not that much in a windmill"

you can't fight that.

[Finishline42]

17. My point being that windmills are simple compared to... say a nuclear plant

My point being that windmills are simple compared to... say a nuclear plant or even a current day car.

You mount them on a tower, spin them into the wind and they generate electricity. I know there's more to it than that but it's not a complicated engineering problem. The loads are isolated and thru the collection of data, fairly easy to deal with. Companies like Vestas are constantly making them better and more efficient. And failures, when they happen, are easy to deal with. How many people does it take to keep a large windfarm going?

Compare that to a nuclear power plant or even a car.

[Finishline42]

18. Aluminum is the least of our worries

To say that we are going to face a critical shortage of either indium or aluminum due to future manufacturing of windmills is beyond the realm of belief especially when you consider how many other products use orders of magnitude more of these elements.

The article you referenced in Nature has a projection of copper use based on a historical market up to 2010. The problem with that was the manipulation of commodities by investors that has seen the bottom fall out. There is currently an over supply of copper.

Utilities fight every day against wind and solar because they destroy the economic model that they have profited with for decades. The model depends on everyday costs that get to add to. With every ton of consumable fuel they buy, transport, use and deal with the waste they get to add their 'cost'. The utilities have been getting fat on there not being an alternative. Well that seems to be changing everyday.

The journey of 1000 miles starts with the first step and you and your ridiculous projections would have not take that first step.

[NeoGreen]

20. I think that is why they are so worried...

...and resort to this kind of campaign...

Wind and solar can easily be de-centralized.

I already have plans in my head to write up a proposal from my town to start building/funding/developing a community solar/wind/pumped hydro/CAS farm.

And once we develop good array of residential scale battery technologies and find ways to reduce consumption some of the grid can be eliminated/dismantled.

Not only cut the cord, but cut out the whole stagnant industry out of the picture.

I'm sure ideas like this keep them up at night.

[NeoGreen]

6. So the thesis is, that there is insufficient Indium...

...to build 15,000,000 windmills sufficient to supply 90 exajoules of energy?

And, that the estimated required mass of Indium would be on the order of 18,000 tons?

Despite:
The estimated global crust abundance of Indium ranging between 0.160 and 0.250 ppm?
see:
http://www.webelements.com/periodicity/abundance_crust/
and
http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele049.html

When, for comparison, the estimated global crust abundance of Silver ranges between 0.075 and 0.080 and in 2012, alone, the world produced approximately 24,000 Tonnes (i.e. 26,455 tons) of Silver.

If so, the thesis on the face of it, does not seem to be the least bit credible.

[NNadir]

8. I guess I shouldn't have spent several weeks in the primary scientific literature reading about...

indium and the other critical elements, including their sources and processing, and working to put my references in place.

I could have just googled my way to Web elements and posted glib "hear what you want to hear" junk.

Anyone who is completely lacking in even the faintest appreciation of geochemistry is not really in a position to adjudge what is and is not credible.

Thanks for your, um, "insight." Whenever one pokes the sacred cow, one is sure to hear something like this.

Have a nice evening.

[NeoGreen]

9. ok, fair enough...

...instead of a reasoned rebuttal, you appeal to authority and resort to a form of ridicule.

got it

a parting question, did you intend to insert the smilie before or after the Freudian reference to the proverbial "sacred cow"?

[kristopher]

11. Like I said...

Vogon poetry.

[NeoGreen]

13. I did particularly enjoy...

...the reference.

42

sometimes the best answers are the concise ones.

[kristopher]

14. It just struck me...

I wonder if that is related to 4:20?

Probably not, he was a Brit.

[NeoGreen]

15. Whoosh...

...ok, I am missing the connection.

4:20? Esoteric biblical reference?

Apparently my brain...work...not...today...think...much...(insert bevus/butthead laugh track here)....now...

[NeoGreen]

19. Googled it...

...got it...

Smoke em' if you got em'...

Peace Dude

[NNadir]

21. An unreasoned response to a negative response about a topic about which you didn't read...

...does not require anything beyond ridicule.

You're expressing nothing more than laziness.

Appeal to authority is a perfectly legitimate response if the authority is competent. By contrast, appeal to authority when the authority is incompetent is another story.

The Nature journals have the some of the highest impact factors in the scientific community. The authors are published in Nature Geoscience because, um, he's a competent authority.

Web elements, by contrast, is great if you need an atomic weight in high school, but not much more.

In the original text, there were reproductions from a Priestly lecture and a recent publication in PNAS of Sherwood Plots. If you had bothered to look at them, you might have been slightly more educated than you are now.

Have a nice day.

[NeoGreen]

22. So, upon further review...

...of the printed authorities within my personal library, I find myself standing by my initial skepticism of the thesis that there is insufficient Indium in the world for the projected need to build 15 million windmills in an effort to produce 90 exajoules of energy.

...at the conclusion of part 1 of this series, we saw that the putative demand for the element indium in order to build some 15,000,000 wind turbines (at a nominal peak capacity of roughly 900 MW) that would be required to produce annual outputs of 90 exajoules of energy, given the low capacity utilization associated with wind infrastructure, was on the order of 18,000 tons.

See the original post (OP) above and at: http://www.democraticunderground.com/112790020

(and please note, I in no way accept or am attempting to validate the claim that 15,000,000 windmills and/or that an asscociated 18,000 tons of Indium would be required, just that, on a admittedly back of the envelope calculation, the claim that 18,000 tons of Indium are not to be found in the Earth's crust is not credible)


Given that way back in 1968, the crustal abundance of Indium was grossly estimated to be on the order of: “1x10^-5%”
See references below:



And around 1986-1987 that abundance was further refined to be:



Where it is clearly reported that the world was producing ~4,000,000 troy ounces/year (131.23 tons/year) with a ~1987 market price was around $1 to $5 per gram and that there is (as per 1987) approximately the same abundance of Indium in the Earth's crust as there is Silver.

Also noted that Indium was obtained primarily from ores containing Sphalerite:



Which some may view as uninteresting, due to its abundance, unlike myself who has collected a few specimens and find the deep brown color somewhat charming.

If, with my admittedly very limited knowledge of Geochemistry (granted I only got a "B" when I took the course all the way back in 1990), can manage to find reason to be skeptical at the crux of the thesis that there is insufficient Indium on the Earth, why should anyone bother to read your full dissertation when you can't even be bothered to post a informative answer to a minor objection to the premise?

Science requires skepticism, and that is all I initially posted.

However, you did not respond to my skepticism with any sort of explanation, but merely a tert and as I perceived it, rude, "go read my post/notes!".

Usually, when simple straight forward skepticism is met with "because I say so" or "go read the whole paper", it is often because the science behind the initial claim is lacking, and/or because there is an agenda at stake.

[NNadir]

24. Oh please...

You post a scan of the Merck index from 1968 and the CRC Handbook from 1986 and what...I'm supposed to be impressed?

You know, Google scholar is an excellent tool for doing library research, even for a lazy person who claims to understand what you call "scientific skepticism."

A "skeptic" who has done no independent research of his own is, um, not really a skeptic at all. He or she is merely a person who is uninformed.

I often go through hundreds of scientific papers in a week on a scanning level, and a good many of them on a deeper level.

Here's an exercise for you: Go to Google scholar and enter the terms "indium" and "reserves." When I do that I get 14,000 hits.

Then click on "since 2011" on the left side, to find references that are at least 25 years newer than your silly page in the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.

The first link you should see, among the 4,780 links coming up should be a bibliographic reference from Harvard's library which records a Ph.D. Dissertation with an abstract reading thusly:

Energy and material constraints concerning the rapid deployment of photovoltaic energy in the twenty-first century: The objective of my research was to determine if the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) projections of future photovoltaic (PV) capacity could be met by thin-film PV---specifically CIGS and CdTe technology---given material reserves in the Earth. I developed a model that calculated the amount of critical metals necessary to accommodate EPIA PV growth projections. I then compared the amount of materials that would be necessary to meet these projections with the amount of material available in geologic reserves according to the USGS. Based on my model I determined that the EPIA PV scenario would cause the exhaustion of global tellurium and indium reserves by the year 2023 and therefore cannot be met by CIGS and CdTe technology alone.

Again, several thousand similar references follow. Many of these references are behind firewalls, since they are from academic journals, but many interested citizens can in fact access these journals by heading to a good open university library.

Really, it's not my responsibility to kiss the ass of every person who pulls out general reference books from a mediocre undergraduate career to avoid reading anything else on the subject.

I'm sorry that you're offended, but trust me, I am equally offended by intellectual laziness, particularly where issues involved with sustainability of the planet are concerned. We have just bet the planetary atmosphere on the notion that solar and wind energy are necessary and sufficient, this while they have demonstrated no such thing.

I won't ask you to get off your ass and head out to a decent university science library to actually read the links. This would apparently raise your self defined "skepticism" hackles, even if I see them as pure laziness.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend. It's been a very pleasant chat.

[NeoGreen]

23. Still pushing the agenda?...

...so I see...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112792653