Supply-chain dynamics of tellurium, indium and gallium within the context of PV module manufacturing costs

Given the need for humankind to implement more sustainable energy choices, it is crucial for energy systems such as PV to demonstrate success both soon and over the long-term quest for meaningful deployment. To that end, both the crystalline silicon and thin-film technologies have made, and continue to make, remarkable strides toward providing solutions that are quickly becoming more competitive against the traditional sources for power generation. But, within the thin-film segment of this industry, the highest demonstrated sunlight power conversion efficiencies have thus far come from technologies containing relatively rare constituent elements. These include tellurium in cadmium telluride, and indium and/or gallium in the CIS/ CIGS and III–V families of technologies. In this paper we show that the current global supply base for these three energy-critical elements is not sufficient for enabling energy-significant levels of deployment, but also show that every one of the thin-film PV technologies that we describe has the ability to absorb an increase in the price for each constituent element(s). This ability then leads to the possibility that the supply base for each element can be augmented.