Thanks for your thoughtful note Alex, and congratulations on your spectacular precious metals trade. Question on silver in solar: US annual solar additions are ramping up to ~30GW p.a., and even if we pencil in ~40GW of incremental solar per year on avg over the next decade, that should roughly translate to 28mn oz of silver required which is ~2.4% of last year's consumption.
I understand that we have been in a structural supply deficit, but is the clip of solar growth (say 20-30mn oz/yr which is approx. 2-3% of total consumption) really enough to justify the parabolic price action of late? genuinely curious for your thoughts on what a good framework for understanding what the price sensitivity of silver to this flow is?
China installed over 300GW of solar in 2025 alone, and the world totaled 650-700GW, so that 2.4% figure you estimated for the US at 30 GW can be 20x, turning into about 50%. I think that is maybe overstated, but obviously it is quite meaningful.
It's cool to fancy where silver will be when you must fight the Transformers for it, tho it's probably unlikely the US can/will bet on just solar for the predicted electricity demand LOL. Practically, how do you think the currently 60% fossil, 21% renewable, and 19% nuclear power source split will change?
Thanks for your thoughtful note Alex, and congratulations on your spectacular precious metals trade. Question on silver in solar: US annual solar additions are ramping up to ~30GW p.a., and even if we pencil in ~40GW of incremental solar per year on avg over the next decade, that should roughly translate to 28mn oz of silver required which is ~2.4% of last year's consumption.
I understand that we have been in a structural supply deficit, but is the clip of solar growth (say 20-30mn oz/yr which is approx. 2-3% of total consumption) really enough to justify the parabolic price action of late? genuinely curious for your thoughts on what a good framework for understanding what the price sensitivity of silver to this flow is?
China installed over 300GW of solar in 2025 alone, and the world totaled 650-700GW, so that 2.4% figure you estimated for the US at 30 GW can be 20x, turning into about 50%. I think that is maybe overstated, but obviously it is quite meaningful.
Thanks Aurelien, I came to the same discovery that China is the key demand vector here, not US and its energy policy. Did some more digging around, and wrote about it here. Let me know what you think: https://open.substack.com/pub/returnoncapital/p/how-to-think-about-silver?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
❤️ the post!
It's cool to fancy where silver will be when you must fight the Transformers for it, tho it's probably unlikely the US can/will bet on just solar for the predicted electricity demand LOL. Practically, how do you think the currently 60% fossil, 21% renewable, and 19% nuclear power source split will change?