Seeking Alpha, 2/9/2017, Zoltan Ban
Key Takeaways:
- We live in a time where visionaries have become very popular
- Predictions are hard to resist if you care about the world yet desire to maintain the current standard of living
- Average solar panel of 1.8 square meters requires about 20 grams of silver
- A square kilometer (247 acres) requires about 11.1 tons of silver to cover with solar panels
- At 20% efficiency, it would take a land mass the size of Spain with solar panels to power the world
- This requires approximately 5.62 million tons of silver
- However, the world’s current known official silver reserves per Statista is less than 600,000 tons
- It is estimated that to date, about 45-50 billion ounces or 1.5 million tons of silver were produced throughout history
- Assuming global demand growth at 1% per year, the solar economy would need an additional 14,000 tons per year not counting 7.000 tons per year needed to replace lost capacity
- For reference, current silver mining production is 28,000 tons per year
- For me, the message is to invest in silver now.