Understanding Solar Energy

The bit how about incredibly quickly PV has grown is a figurative slap in the face to Vaclav Smil. He had just ten years earlier said PV wasn't going to grow quickly because historically energy replacements took a long time.

https://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/scientific...

This retrospective on Smil's predictions four years ago is notable:

https://www.quora.com/Is-Vaclav-Smil-right-in-his-criticisms...

"To get 1 PWh/year of electricity you need to install about 450 GW worth of solar panels. You need dozens of years to acomplish such task. Reality check: 3 years in current speed, in the future probably faster."

Indeed, as the thread top link shows in 2024 the world installed 595 GW of PV.

As John Kenneth Galbraith said, "If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."

What people tend to forget is, that coal, oil and gas are all restricted by mining or drilling as the old are consumed, and it gets harder to access new oil wells etc. For PV there is no such limit (only copper basically, but this is recyclable and aluminum can do many tasks.) For batteries, there is lithium (lifepo4) and even that is questionable (sodium batteries) and again there is the potential for recycling. Hence, I do not see anything stopping the exponential growth of PV and batteries.