The silver learning curve for photovoltaics and projected silver demand for net‐zero emissions by 2050

The clean energy transition could see the cumulative installed capacity of photovoltaics increase from 1 TW before the end of 2022 to 15–60 TW by 2050, creating a significant silver demand risk. Here, we present a silver learning curve for the photovoltaic industry with a learning rate of 20.3 ± 0.8%. Maintaining business as usual with a dominance of p‐type technology could require over 20% of the current annual silver supply by 2027 and a cumulative 450–520 kt of silver until 2050, approximately 85–98% of the current global silver reserves. A rapid transition to higher efficiency tunnel oxide passivated contact and silicon heterojunction cell technologies in their present silver‐intensive forms could increase and accelerate silver demand. As we approach annual production capacities of over 1 TW by 2030, addressing the silver issue requires increased efforts in research and development to increase the silver learning rate by 30%, with existing silver‐lean and silver‐free metallisation approaches including copper plating and screen‐printing of aluminium and copper. We present a silver learning curve for the global PV industry with a learning rate of approximately 20%. By 2027, the PV industry could require 20% of the global silver supply if maintaining a dominance of p‐type techhnology, or higher with a shift to silver‐intensive n‐type technologies. Despite significant reductions in silver consumption per cell over the last ten years, the PV industry needs to accelerate the learning rate to over 30% to account for future growth of the industry and make careful technology choices in relation to silver consumption.