Silver’s price upshoot confirms a sustained solar panel boom even as the metal heads for oversupply

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Did we just pass peak solar? That’s the claim now circulating among many analysts. Hitting net zero will require 630GW of panels to be installed every year between 2030 and 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates.

But we already blew past that target with 654GW built last year, according to BloombergNEF. China’s installations have hit a permanent peak, Sam Wilkinson, head of renewables at S&P Global Commodities, told the Redefining Energy podcast recently. With that one country making up nearly half the global market, the world will see connections drop in 2026, he added.

Strip out the ‘buffer’ of entirely unexpected demand that BloombergNEF built into its forecasts to account for the way solar routinely outperforms, and it looks like we’re never going to get past the 633GW connected in 2025. For an alternative view, look at the past year’s hottest commodity. Even after a slump from a record $121.65 per troy ounce in late January, silver prices are up 154% from a year earlier.

Trading at $81.60 last Wednesday, the metal has notched more than double gold’s gain. As with any commodity price spike, that’s the result of speculation as much as anything fundamental. But even speculators ground their bets in the physical market, where 60% of silver consumption comes from industrial users and most of the action over the past decade has come from solar.

Silver’s conductivity makes it essential to photovoltaic modules, where thin printed contacts boost electrical output. About 196 million ounces were used by solar panel manufacturers last year. That’s equivalent to every gram used in jewellery and represents about 17% of the global market.