hacker spirit and/or hedge against the end of the industrial age
Personally, I don't have much faith in sustaining a modern industrial lifestyle for billions of people very long term on PV panels or any renewables really (EROEI issues, rare earth minerals etc.). But I'm bullish on electricity in general.
By far the most common PV systems are single-junction monocrystalline silicon. These have had pretty decent ERoEI for many years (9–10 according to https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/67901.pdf, but the energy required for PV modules has dropped precipitously since then) and don't use any rare-earth minerals.
Wind turbines have typically had even higher ERoEI (15–20 according to https://davidturver.substack.com/p/eroei-eroi-of-onshore-off...), and, while they do most commonly use rare earths, that's an engineering tradeoff rather than necessary; currently viable alternatives include switched-reluctance-machine generators (which just use conventional electrical steel, like transformers and relays) and other kinds of rare-earth-free generators: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142071...
Personally, I don't have much faith in sustaining a modern industrial lifestyle for billions of people very long term on PV panels or any renewables really (EROEI issues, rare earth minerals etc.). But I'm bullish on electricity in general.