Perovskite Photovoltaics: The Path to a Printable Terawatt-Scale Technology

Abundant, low-cost, reliable, and clean energy is critical not just to maintain but also to improve the living conditions across the globe. Because of the world's unrelenting population and GDP growth that is only slightly offset by reductions in energy intensity per $ of GDP, it has been estimated that by 2050 the world will consume an average of 30 Terawatts (TW) of total (i.e., not just electricity) energy, of which, assuming no current generation capacity retires, at least between 10-15 TW will be completely new capacity. Addressing this 'Terawatt challenge', a term originally coined by Richard Smalley in 2004, in a nonpolluting and sustainable way is integral to addressing socioeconomic needs in both industrial and rapidly developing countries worldwide. In conjunction with ongoing electrification of the energy system, the vastness of the available solar resource will provide a solution to the world's energy needs if we can develop sufficiently low-cost, high-performance, and massively scalable photovoltaic (PV) technology.