Sustainable power is not sustainable?

[tirant]

So says this quick little article from NSBasically, this argument suggests that the scarcity of certain minerals and metals needed for sustainable power renders them useless for providing power to the whole world. An example might be advanced solar panels, which need indium to function. With all the talk recently about putting a kilowatt of solar

Comments

[usofe]

Great article. I'm completely blown away by the fact that they estimate 10 years before indium is used up, BECAUSE OF LCD TV'S!

The link to the article about an alternative to indium looks promising and also as if it isn't too far out. You also get another use for carbon out of it, as well as more efficiency.

It would still be preferable, given the externalities of carbon-based fuels, to use the old silicon photocells. But, we would need to do some serious incentivizing (which we now do for ADM, DuPont, Raytheon and Monsanto).

[tirant]

silicon cells are only 25% effective here on earth, and that is heavily doped up with all sorts of "lovely" chemicals.

Much better to put them in orbit too. heck if we are spending a trillion dollars, why not do it in GSO and have a power generator we can all look at?

On another note, the wikipedia article on indium suggests that 10 years is over blown because there are both alternative technologies and better extraction methods. The comparison was to silver, which is more rare, and yet is extracted in higher quantities.

[usofe]

That's good to hear. Related to innovation, the env-econ website has a post about how Kyoto has spurred innovation in green tech:

http://www.env-econ.net/2009/02/climate-policy-does-wonders-for-your-greentech-patent-count.html

Pretty cool, eh?